KUWAIT CITY (Kuwait) - Kuwait Club opened their Gulf League three-peat bid on a rousing note by spoiling the debut of Al Ahli, 88-77, in the 2024/2025 FIBA WASL curtain-raiser, Monday night at the Shaikh Saad Alabdullah Sport Hall Complex.
The perennial contenders dictated the pace early on and established a huge lead in the third quarter, which proved to be enough cushion to keep their Bahraini foes at bay approaching the final minutes en route to staying perfect in opening games.
Game heroes: JaKarr Sampson and Briante Weber led the way with 19 points each as the new reinforcements shone and ushered somewhat a fresh start for the crew after spending the last two WASL seasons with Cady Lalanne and Marcus Georges-Hunt.
Sampson himself was key in their strong first half, already tallying 15 and 5 before entering the break as the 2.01 M (6'7") forward proved to be a tough cover.
Weber, on the other hand, did much of the damage in the second half and went on to finish with 7 rebounds and 7 assists to his name for an efficiency of 25, eventually going home with STEP AHEAD Player of the Game honors by match's end.
Another newcomer in Augustine Rubit was as important in the victory, finishing with 17 points on 5-of-9 shooting from the floor alongside 8 rebounds.
Masaed Aloutaibi went a perfect 3-for-3 from beyond the arc to finish with 13 points as a total of four players finished in double figures for Kuwait Club.
Turning point: Coach Peter Schomers' wards started out hot by opening the game with a 19-6 attack, but it wasn't actually until the second chapter where the home team would start leading by double digits for the rest of the night.
After the visiting side came within seven points behind Jordan Stevens, Rubit scored five in an 8-0 run toward a 33-18 advantage with 7:16 on the clock.
Kuwait Club would lead by as many as 27 points, and all that Al Ahli could do is to make the margin respectable as they found it hard to stage a major fightback.
Stats don't lie: Following Monday night's win, Kuwait Club have now won all three of their WASL-Gulf opening assignments, first against Qatar's Al Sadd in 2022 and then versus Muharraq, another team from Bahrain, last season.
They said: "At the end, we're not happy. But we won by 11 points. It was never a question, I think, that we won. So, that's a good point. But there's definitely upside in our game and things we can improve. We gotta take the good things out of this game and focus on those, and we gotta take the bad things out of it and improve." Peter Schomers, Head Coach, Kuwait Club
"It felt good. It always feels good to get a win. Like Coach said, we still got things to work on. We had way too many turnovers (19). I feel like we got a lot of room to improve, so that's great. Even though we got the win, we see things we still need to get better at." - JaKarr Sampson, Forward, Kuwait Club
"This was tough. We did not play against a team that's just participating, we played against the back-to-back champions of the Gulf. Ahli is just participating. As you saw it was tough, but we finished in a good way." - Jad El Hajj, Head Coach, Al Ahli
"It was a good lesson for us. It was a good game to prepare ourselves, and prepare the team. We know our mistakes. We have to figure it out. We have to prepare also for Shabab Al Ahli in our home court." - Maitham Isa, Guard, Al Ahli Club
FIBA