Depleted Al Riyadi still too much, shred Alkaramah by 22 to rebound

DAMASCUS (Syria) - Al Riyadi missed the services of Wael Arakji but that hardly mattered as they dealt Alkaramah an 89-67 beatdown for their biggest win yet in WASL-West Asia, Thursday night at the Al Fayhaa Stadium.

Down to only 10 men, the Lebanese club changed the tides in the second quarter and rode the wave of momentum since then on the way to redeeming themselves from that 100-87 loss to Al Naft in Baghdad last week.

Al Riyadi improved to 2-1 following the victory, creating a 3-way logjam with Al Naft and Gorgan in the competitive Group B.

Alkaramah, meanwhile, lost their third in as many games.

Game heroes: Amir Saoud led the way with a season-high 26 points. Ater Majok finished with a double-double of 22 points and 10 rebounds.

Ali Mansour flirted with a triple-double with 18 points, 13 rebounds, and 8 assists as the veteran trio powered Al Riyadi's breakaway that left a wild crowd silent.

STEP AHEAD Player Of The Game: For his best showing to date, Saoud earned STEP AHEAD Player of the Game honors, garnering 28-percent of the votes.

Turning point: Alkaramah actually took a 28-24 lead during the second period but Al Riyadi fired 6 straight behind Miguel Martinez, Mohamad Tabbara, and Abdel Moneim to seize the upper hand, eventually entering the break with a 45-37 edge.

The visitors would remain ahead since. With Saoud and Majok leading the way, their lead rose to 56-42 with with 5:01 to go in the third quarter.

Alkaramah still fought back and came within 5, 51-56, with under 3 minutes to go in the same period but there was simply no stopping Al Riyadi.

Saoud and Majok restored order before the period ended, and it was all Al Riyadi from there as they coasted to the 22-point victory.

Stats don't lie: Thanks to their 24 assists, Al Riyadi shot 52-percent from the floor.

They said: "It was a defensive game from our side. Riyadi's team is well-known as a great offensive team, this is our usual score but the difference was defensively. We did great defensively. We stopped their key players, that's why we ended up winning the game. " - Georges Akiki, Head Coach, Al Riyadi

"As what Coach said, we had a lot of missing players so our main target today was to play defense, to hustle, to get some stops, and run the fastbreak. We started well in the game, the Karamah fans were really enjoyable in today's game, they gave us a hard time. We came from a loss to Al Naft so we had to come here and win the game. We had no other option. Thank God we got the win." - Ali Mansour, Al Riyadi

"I want to thank my players. They were like heroes today. They played like a team. Maybe we controlled the first half, but the problems came in the second half. We controlled like points from turnovers; we made only 13 turnovers from maybe like 18 to 20, so these are good numbers. Bad numbers are we made only 27 of our 72 field goals and points from the paint -- this is the turning point here -- 28 [percent] for Alkaramah, 52 [percent] for Al Riyadi and this is a huge number. So we have a problem in import players. Until now we cannot deal with big guys, we need big guys for this team." - Azzam Al Hussein, Head Coach, Alkaramah

FIBA