KUWAIT CITY (Kuwait) - Ittihad Club gave Kuwait Club a reason to worry about their title defense bid in the 2024/2025 FIBA WASL-Gulf League following a stunning 96-87 victory on Tuesday night at the Shaikh Saad Alabdullah Sport Hall Complex.
Keron DeShields and Mohammed Almarwani helped out in steadying the ship for the Saudi Arabian side in the midst of a fourth-quarter storm by the home team en route to taking the opening salvo of their best-of-3 Qualification to Semi-Finals affair.
Not only did they move closer to the next round but the charges of Coach Slobodan Subotic also pushed the reigning, two-time Sub-Zone League champions a defeat away from witnessing their 'three-peat' aspirations go in tatters.
Ittihad can close it out in Game 2 next Tuesday, February 11, at the Green Basketball Court in Jeddah, with the home crowd expected to troop to the venue once more.
Game heroes: DeShields led the way with 27 points on a 50-percent clip from the floor, together with 8 rebounds and 7 assists to flirt with a triple-double.
Almarwani, on the other hand, was just a rebound shy of a double-double as he finished with 20 points on 8-of-11 shooting - including 3-of-4 from deep - and 9 rebounds on his way to earning STEP AHEAD Player of the Game honors.
Makur Maker tallied 19 points and 12 rebounds. Yasir Aljohani scatered 15 points, 5 rebounds, and 5 assists, while Su Braimoh added 13 points as a total of five players finished in double figures, big thanks to their 20 assists as a team.
Turning point: Ittihad took control of the match in the second quarter and even went on to lead by as many as 18 points during the third, but Kuwait Club woke up all of a sudden late in the deciding chapter and issued a major threat to the visiting side.
Behind a rally led by the troika of Briante Weber, Hamad Hasan, and Omran Jawhar, the squad managed to knock within a point twice inside the last 4:13.
But then, DeShields happened. The seasoned guard took matters in his own hands, scoring seven of their next eight points to stretch the gap to 90-84 with 1:12 to go.
Then came Almarwani to help keep Kuwait Club at arm's length, scoring off a tip-in amidst a clogged paint with 43.7 seconds remaining to make it a five-point spread.
A missed three-pointer by JaKarr Sampson moments later made the window smaller for the wards of Coach Peter Schomers to come back. Aljohani and DeShields then went on to apply the finishing touches as Ittihad took the series opener.
Stats don't lie: Ittihad shot a solid 49.3-percent from the floor on the way to sending Kuwait Club skidding to their second loss in a row, the first time that they've lost in consecutive fashion in this league since the WASL Final 8 in Qatar last season.
They said: "They showed that they are not selfish. They shared the ball. They always try to find the best solution for the team. But we are team that does not want the foreigners or our locals to score 20 or 30 points every night. Basketball is a team of five or 12 players and everybody needs to be involved." - Slobodan Subotic, Head Coach, Ittihad Club
"Coach believes in me and I just try to play my heart out. I don't really have it in my mind, like, 'Let me just take over.' It's just within the flow of the game. Whatever the defense gives us, we take it as a club and I just step up. Coach believed in me, my teammates believed in me and I just take the shot. Whether it goes in or not, I'm just embracing whatever comes within the game." - Keron DeShields, Guard, Ittihad Club
"Definitely it wasn't what we wanted especially in the first half. I think they outphysicaled us. The things we wanted to do to them, they kinda did to us. We made a comeback late and they made some big shits and they won the game. But it's only one game. It's a series of three. Hopefully we learn from it and figure out how to play better against them." - Peter Schomers, Head Coach, Kuwait Club
"This game here was a tale of two halves. The first half, we came out, we got punched in the mouth. We had to readjust and come back and in the second half, we showed who we really are. If we come out and play for 40 minutes of what we did in the second half, I believe it will be a better game. Now we gotta take a break, get ready to go to Saudi and return the favor on their home court." - Briante Weber, Guard, Kuwait Club
FIBA