KUWAIT CITY (Kuwait) - Al Qadsia SC booked their spot in the 2024/2025 FIBA West Asia Super League (WASL) Final 8 by taking down Manama anew, 81-73, to secure a third-place finish in the Gulf League, Monday night.
Buoyed by a solid home crowd in attendance at the Shaikh Saad Alabdullah Sport Hall Complex, the crew set the pace early on before showing poise in the endgame to give themselves the redemption they badly wanted.
It could be recalled that the Kuwaiti Division 1 Basketball League outfit, who finished as the no. 1 seed in Group B, suffered a heartbreaking defeat to Ittihad Club in the best-of-3 Semi-Finals that went the distance.
Now, they've earned a sweet bounce-back by beating a team they'd stunned early in the season, which also gave new head coach Javier Munoz a triumphant WASL debut as he took over the reins just last week.
With this, Qadsia will be representing the Gulf League in the pan-regional tilt's culminating event in May along with finalists Ittihad and Shabab Al Ahli, whose best-of-3 title series begins this Tuesday in Dubai.
Game heroes: Sek Henry led the way with 28 points, 6 rebounds, and 5 assists as the lefty guard showed how much of a difference-maker he could be after getting hurt in Game 3 against Ittihad that affected their bid.
Abdullah Alsaeid and Rashed Alrabah contributed 11 points apiece and combined for 10 rebounds, while big man Johnathan Williams came through with a double-double of 10 points and 11 rebounds with 4 assists.
Turning point: Qadsia took the lead right from the get-go but it wasn't until during the second half where they'd lead by as many as 11 points, 64-53, behind Mohsen Almosawi with 7:31 remaining in the fourth.
But being the champions that they are, Manama refused to throw in the towel and got to within just three points thrice inside the game's final 3:32 behind the trio of Clint Chapman, Chad Brown, and Tony Carr.
Carr himself did much of the lifting that he ended up with 34 points, but he couldn't pull off his endgame heroics as his potential game-tying three-pointer missed approaching the game's last eight seconds.
Abdulaziz Alhamidi got the rebound and then dished it to Almosawi for an unmolested layup - and the dagger - to make it a 78-73 count with exactly four ticks left, before Henry applied the final blow with a trey.
Soon, the rest of the team would celebrate at center court carrying the giant boarding pass to the Final 8 while Manama headed to the locker room heartbroken as their bid for a third straight trip to the said stage got denied - indeed a bitter pill to swallow considering that they were WASL's inaugural champions.
Stats don't lie: Qadsia clicked from beyond the arc by knocking down 13 three-pointers but aside from that, winning the rebounding battle, 49-39, played a major role in the crucial victory, without a doubt.
They said: "All the people around us, they've been helping us in so many things. And I think this is the way to be a great club. We are a great club, but we will continue to be better and better. We have more games to play. And like what I have told them in the locker room, I'll be here to continue to try to win, and continue to try to improve these guys. Tonight they played a very, very good game. I will continue to support my players." - Javier Munoz, Head Coach, Al Qadsia SC
"I feel like Coach's style, he's been teaching us a lot. I'm familiar with it but I feel like a lot of these players are new to it. It helped us because he always tells us to keep our composure. Because there's been games where we just go crazy or we get angry about certain calls, and we get technical fouls. I believe today, maybe it's our first game since I've been here, we didn't get technical fouls. And that's all part of Coach telling us to keep our composure. Everytime we were up 10, Manama always got it down, but we kept our composure." - Sek Henry, Al Qadsia SC
"We learned a lot. Let's not forget that we started out 0-2. Everybody was counting us out, then we made four wins in a row. We went into the top of the group with Qadsia - plus-6 the both of us - but they got first place. We got through tough games with Ahli. It was a learning experience for a lot of us. Of course when you're Manama, everybody is expecting to win wherever we play. It is what is. But we can't win all the time. But life goes on. We're gonna learn from it and get better as individuals and as a team." - Linos Gavriel, Head Coach, Manama
"Honestly, it's frustrating. We wanted to come in and we wanted to fight to get to the Final 8. This club has a historical tradition of always winning and that's something we wanted to continue ... it's frustrating for everybody, it's frustrating for me being a new player. I wanted to come in and win with these guys and do something special with the team. We didn't get a chance to do it. But we can build on it. And, we still have a chance to get the job done in our league and everything else." - Chad Brown, Manama
FIBA