BASKETBALL – Bahrain’s Seef narrowly missed out on a place in the semi-finals last night of the Sofia Open 3x3 Palms Lite Quest, held in Sofia, Bulgaria.
The kingdom’s representatives lost 18-21 to Uzice Zlatiborac from Serbia in the quarters despite a valiant effort from their quartet of Bogdan Dragovic, Austin Ajukwa, Uros Ilic, and Isa Jasim.
Earlier in the day yesterday, Seef claimed a hard-earned 21-20 victory against hometown outfit 3x3 Sofia in the last 16 to book their berth in the elite eight.
The tournament, which started off on Friday with 24 teams from around the world, was an elite men’s 3x3 basketball event under the International Basketball Federation (Fiba), and it was an official Road to the World Tour meeting.
The Fiba 3x3 World Tour is the premier street basketball series, with Masters stops being the highest-tier tournaments.
Below them are Quest, Super Quest, Challenger, and Lite Quest events.
The Sofia competition was a Lite Quest, which is too small to act as a direct qualifier for a Masters tournament and instead awards winning teams a place in a select Challenger meet.
In Seef’s loss yesterday to Uzice, they faced an early 1-6 hole which later ballooned to a 3-10 deficit, but the Bahraini squad finally came alive and forced a tight finish.
Baskets from Ajukwa and Ilic helped them narrow the gap to 6-11, and then after the Serbians scored, Dragovic fired in from beyond the arc to make it 8-12.
Seef, however, had difficulty in containing their opponents defensively, and two key misses on lay-ups by Dragovic and Ajukwa saw them fall behind 12-18.
Ajukwa then converted a two-pointer and Dragovic followed it up with a driving lay-in to get back to within 15-18 with just 44.2 seconds to go.
But Uzice scored twice on either side of another Dragovic effort to go ahead 20-16 and move to the brink of closing the contest out.
Dragovic then swished in another long-range basket to make it a single-possession game, but the Serbians were awarded a free-throw at the same time and they connected on the attempt to secure the win.
Seef were making their season debut on the international 3x3 basketball circuit in Sofia.
They are now scheduled to return to their training camp in Belgrade, Serbia – where they prepared for their Bulgaria participation – to begin gearing up for their next competition: the Lion City Challenger 2026, to be held in Singapore on June 20 and 21.
This first-ever edition of the Singapore tournament will be a qualifier for the Fiba 3x3 World Tour Lausanne Masters, scheduled for August 14 and 15 in Switzerland.
The top three teams will punch their tickets to the meeting, which is the top level of Fiba 3x3 action.
Bahrain had two teams competing in last year’s Fiba 3x3 World Tour, including Seef and Riffa.
Dragovic was also a part of the Seef roster then.
The kingdom has been involved as a host nation in the past three seasons of the Fiba 3x3 World Tour.
In 2023 and 2024, Bahrain hosted the Manama Masters, while in 2025, the island staged the Fiba 3x3 World Tour Final for the very first time.
Later this year, Bahrain will once again be delighting basketball fans with the Manama Masters, scheduled for November 20 and 21.
This campaign’s finale will then take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on December 12 and 13.
patrick@gdnmedia.bh
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