Pune Peshwas ran over Hyderabad Sky 109-99 to finish second in the South Division of the UBA Professional Basketball League, at the badminton hall, Balewadi Sports Complex in Pune on Saturday.
Pune do have three wins along with Chennai, but the latter’s victory over Pune sees them on top of the table.
The defeat is no setback for Hyderabad as they make the play offs after they have defeated Bangalore in their earlier league match, despite both the teams having the same number of wins.
Tomorrow, it will be a replay of Pune taking on Hyderabad while in the other encounter Haryana clash with Mumbai for a place in the best of three semifinals which will be played from July 25.
Pune’s Narendra Grewal who was out for action for just ten minutes top scored for Pune with 27 points under his belt while Ajinkya Mane (16) and Arjun Mehta supported with 16 and 14 points respectively.
Well aware of the fact that they have made it to the play-off much before the match played slow and led only once in the 4 stages of the game.
“Yes, we did not wanted to take any chances as we are playing them again tomorrow,” said Mahesh Padmanabhan the Hyderabad skipper. “Although the win would have boosted our morale, playing slow enabled us to rest in way for the matchtomorrow.”
It was the bench strength which Hyderabad fielded giving some rest for the regulars. “That was our strategy and we hope to give it back to them against the home crowd. And we love playing against big crowd and we have come out good,” said Mahesh.
Final: Pune Peshwas: 109 (Narendra Grewal 27, Ajinkya Mane 16, Arjun Mehta 14, Abhishek Y P 12) beat Hyderabad: 99 (Mahipal Singh 26, Mahesh 20, Manu Thomas 17)
