Tamil Nadu rallied from behind to defeat fancied Karnataka 52-36 in a girls’ Group B league clash of the 36th Youth National basketball championships at the PSG Tech Indoor Stadium courts here on Saturday.
The host maintained a clean league slate and thus topped the pool for a place in the quarterfinals.
Waiting game
Karnataka, as expected, called the shots in the first two quarters but Tamil Nadu played a waiting game. The latter screened its opponents from close quarters before going all out for the attack.
In the third, the host, down by four points, chose to play from the outside. It did a world of good as A. Nitika and Sree Varshini shot a couple of three pointers to help the team gain a three-point edge (37-34) going into the final session.
The fourth quarter saw the Tamil Nadu girls in top gear. Anything they touched turned into valuable points for the team. Nikita controlled the ball well and came up with some excellent feeds. Karnataka tried hard to contain her and stage a recovery but fell miserably short towards the end.
“It was our final league clash and we wanted to finish with a win. We were down but I was confident of the girls pulling it off,” said M. Raghu Kumar, Tamil Nadu’s head coach. “Nitika was quite brilliant in handling the ball so was Sandhya in both offence and defence.”
Delhi beats Rajasthan
In a Group A contest, Rajasthan, which stunned defending champion Punjab the other day, went down fighting to Delhi 55-54.
The results:
Boys: Tamil Nadu 88 (Hariharasudhan 20, Yusuf 19) bt Chhattisgarh 64 (Pranav Sharma 26, Deepak 25); Chandigarh 87 (Amarendra Nayak 30, Haramanprit Singh 20, Abhishek 16) bt Andhra 82 (Mohammed Khaleel 39, Chandaka 22); Kerala 70 (C.K. Abhinav 20, Pranav Prince 19) bt Delhi 40 (Ashish 14).
Uttar Pradesh 88 (Harshdagar 23, Aman Kaushik 19) bt Chandigarh 70 (Amarendra Nayak 17, Akshay 11); Rajasthan 68 (Digvijay Singh 25, Jitendra 19) bt Madhya Pradesh (Harsh Singh 27, Virat Dhakab 11); Telangana 62 (Vali 22, Jasmi Ali 11) bt Uttarkhand 62 (Chanuhan 13, Hritik Anand 11).
Girls: Tamil Nadu 52 (Nitika 13, Shree Varshini 10, Angel Jeevitha 10) bt Karnataka 36 (Sunishka Kartik 10, Harini 10); Haryana 72 (Ankush 24, Ritika 10) bt Chandigarh 40 (Bagga 13, Krishan 12); Delhi 55 (Prakriti Ranjan 10, Kritika Dhingra 24) bt Rajasthan 54 (Ankita Kumari 13, Manasvi Bhadana 15).
Punjab 68 (Harsimran Kaur 33, Kavya Singla 12) bt Chhattisgarh 31 (Ruksarali 12); Telangana 53 (Tadla Nitya 24, Koduru Ojasui 14) bt Bihar 50 (Pragya Pande 14, Mushkan 25); Maharashtra 91 (Shomira 36, Asmat Kaur 25) bt Uttar Pradesh 80 (Akansha 14, Khusboo 18).