BASKETBALL – BAHRAIN maintained their winning ways yesterday in the 22nd U16 Arab Basketball Championship for Youth, currently being played in Cairo, Egypt.
The kingdom’s representatives posted their third win in as many games after defeating Kuwait 81-57 at the Cairo Stadium Indoor Halls Complex in the Egyptian capital.
The nationals took control of the contest in the second quarter, where they outscored their Gulf rivals 26-12 to take a commanding 44-28 lead into the break. They never looked back from there, going ahead by as many as 29 points late on.
Bahrain’s triumph against Kuwait followed other big wins over Qatar and Algeria earlier this week. They have a break today on the tournament’s rest day and return to action tomorrow when they take on Tunisia at 3pm. They then face off with hosts Egypt in their concluding assignment of the round-robin phase on Friday at 9pm. Both times are Bahrain.
With their win yesterday, the nationals took an important step forward to securing a berth in the tournament’s final, which is scheduled for Sunday. The top two teams on the standings at the end of the ongoing stage will clash in the title-decider.
This year’s U16 Arab Basketball Championship for Youth is being played with six nations in the mix. It has been organised and is being run by the Arab Basketball Confederation (ABC), in cooperation with the Egyptian Basketball Federation.
In yesterday’s contest, Bahrain held a slim 18-16 advantage at the end of the opening period, but then pulled away to start the second with a game-changing 19-2 run. That was capped by a Hassan Abdulkadir lay-up that made it 37-18, and that helped the Bahrainis build a 16-point cushion at the interval.
In the third, Bahrain did well to preserve the double-digit gap and were ahead 65-51 after three. In the final canto, they finished strong, holding the Kuwaitis to just six points the entire quarter. A Hassan Fouad lay-up with three-and-a-half minutes to play then gave them their biggest lead of the game at 81-52, and they cruised to the final buzzer.
Somto Patrick Onoduenyi was Bahrain’s leading scorer with 20 points. He also took down 14 rebounds and registered five steals. Fouad had 14 while Abdulkadir added 12, both off the bench, while skipper Ali Hussien was their last player in double figures with 10.
Fareej Yassien top scored for Kuwait with 19 points while captain Abdulaziz Abdallah chipped in with 16 in the losing effort.
The nationals are playing in this ABC competition after winning the Fiba U16 Asia Cup GBA Qualifiers 2025 just last month. They thus also punched their tickets – along with Saudi Arabia – to this year’s Fiba U16 Asia Cup, to be held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, next month.
patrick@gdnmedia.bh
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