Manama power to Golden Square lead

TDT | Manama                                                      

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Manama cruised to a deserving 1-0 lead in their best-of-three Golden Square semi -final series in the 2023/2024 Zain Bahrain Basketball League.

The defending champions powered to a convincing 96-64 triumph in game one of their match-up, which is between the first and fourth seeds in the previous Top Six round.

Manama raced out to a huge 26-11 advantage at the end of the first quarter and never looked back.

They went ahead by as many as 32 points in the contest and gave Ettihad no chance to fight back in the second half.

Manama will now be looking to close out the series when the two teams meet again in game two, scheduled for Friday next week.

Ettihad will be hoping to fofece a decisive third game, which, if needed, would be held on April 26.

The winner if this Golden Square series will take on the Victor of the other Head-tohead between Al Ahli and Muharraq.

That clash gets underway tonight with game one tipping off at 8pm.

Final four Muharraq are the second seeds heading into the final four while Ahli are the third seeds.

In last night’s contest, Manama built on their 15-point lead ending the first period to go ahead 55-30 at the half.

They continued their strong play in the third quarter where they stretched their advantage to 73- 48 heading into the final period.

There, they did enough to close our their opponents and secure the one-game lead.

Sir’Dominic Pointer top scored for Manama with 29 points while Ahmed Salman added 26.

Train Thibodeaux chipped in with 19 while taking down 15 rebounds in the win.

For Ettihad, Billy Preston scored 30 to pace their team in the loss. He was their only player in double figures, as fellow-import Demetrius Treadwell and Ali Ghadeer finished with just nine markers.