Indian basketball teams unable to qualify to knockout stages of Asian 3x3 event

Action from the Asian 3x3 event

New Delhi/Bengaluru (15 August 2015): The two Indian men’s basketball teams, Bangalore and Chandigarh, have lost their league games and been knocked out of the 3x3 FIBA World Tour - Beijing Masters.

Team Bangalore (seeded 9th), which comprises senior Indian team campers that won the 3x3 South Asian Qualifiers in Colombo a few weeks ago, faced off against 8th seeded Zheng Zhou in their first game. The Pool A match at the Wukesong Hi-Park in Beijing was extremely close, with India going down 18-21. The second and final league match for Bangalore was always going to be an uphill task, facing tournament top seeds NoviSad AlWahda (UAE). The one sided contest saw Bangalore fall 13-21. Despite the two losses, the bright spot for India undoubtedly was the scoring abilities of Bangalore centre Jeevanantham Pandi. His 16 points was the second highest after two league games, among all 48 individual participants.

The young Chandigarh team, seeded 12th and placed in Pool D, lost to Tokyo Japan (4th seeds) 12-21, and later in the evening to hometeam Wukesong (5th seeds) 13-21.

While India may have been knocked out of the team events, Siddhant Shinde from Bangalore and Kushmeet Atwal from Chandigarh have registered in the shootout contest that will be held tomorrow (16th August 2015).

Results for India matches: 1) Chandigarh lost to Tokyo Japan 12-21; 2) Bangalore lost to Zheng Zhou 18-21; 3) Bangalorelost to NoviSad AlWahda UAE 13-21; 4) Chandigarh lost to Wukesong China 13-21.