Hyderabad Sky played some delightful offensive basketball as they racked up their first win the UBA against a strong Bengaluru Beast side. The Sky won the game 81-70 and have now opened up the league quite wonderfully.
Hyderabad were responsible for some poor shooting in their first three games, but they learned their lessons as they tactically got the better of Bengaluru.
Mahesh, Joginder Sharma and Edwin were brilliant with their shooting, rebounds and defensive transitions.
Joginder top-scored for the Sky with 20 points and hit 4 three-pointers. Mahesh and Edwin had 18 and 15 points respectively in the game.
Hyderabad made the best use of their two best players, Mahesh and Joginder Sharma; something we haven’t seen throughout the tournament.
“We changed a few things. We practiced on those changes. In the first few games people were rushing in early and they were not used to playing in front of the crowd.
“They rush and they rush and they have no patience. Today we worked on our rebounding and things worked out” said Mahesh who has been Hyderabad’s standout player in the tournament.
Hyderabad get off the mark
Hyderabad Sky who have been poor all season looked more focused than ever and started the first quarter the brightest among two sides. Joginder Singh hit a three on his first attempt and Mahesh who has been their best player of the tournament was surprisingly missing easy layups early on.
Bengaluru took a slender lead of 14-10 when big man Edwin rose the highest to dunk and give the crowd something to cheer.
Moments later, it was Bengaluru’s turn to cheer when Visu Palani hit a fantastic three with just 2 seconds left on the shot clock.
Hyderabad were passing better than we have seen them in other games. Big man Monish Wilson was finding acres of space in the first half and Joginder was finding him with relative ease.
Monish hit two three’s including one from Joginder himself to give Sky an important lead of 34-29 in the second quarter. While the Beast came back strongly Hyderabad had a slender lead of 39-37 by the end of an exciting first half.
Visu started taking matter into his own for the Beast in the second half with impressive shooting, blocks and assists. He was pivotal to Bengaluru’s superb offensively play as they were trying to take the game to the Sky.
Man of the match from the last two games Raghuram and Yashas of Bengaluru were rotated often, but none of them really got into the game. Apart from a couple of baskets it was Manpreet for the Beast who impressed.
The end of the third quarter was quite a sight for the audience as Hyderabad came down from a 6 point deficit to lead by a single point at the end of the third.
When the score was 56-54 in favour of the Beast, Mahesh hit a easy jumper and followed it up with a fantastic three to give Hyderabad the lead.
The Sky started believing in themselves and they showed a mammoth improvement from all their previous games.
Mahesh went from strength to strength and together with point guard Joginder, Hyderabad had a 7 point lead with 3 minutes to play. The pressure was clearly on the Beasts as they had no answer to accurate shooting from the Sky.
With a minute left, Joginder scored 5, and Bengaluru lost patience, as they faltered to give the Sky a 7 point lead. Eventually Hyderabad came on top and finished with 81-70 and they have something to look up to as the tournament’s Phase-1 comes to a close.
