National Basketball | Tamil Nadu men set up a date with Railways

Tamil Nadu men reaffirmed their billing as the favourites with a commanding 102-53 win over Uttar Pradesh in the semifinals of the 75th senior National basketball championship at the Nehru Indoor Stadium here on Saturday.

TN will meet Railways in the summit clash on Sunday after the latter prevailed over Delhi 65-53.

As has been the pattern in TN’s matches, the opponents kept the defending champion honest for a while, but couldn’t sustain it for the entire 40 minutes.

The visitors took the lead in the first quarter (21-20), but once the hosts upped the ante, U.P.’s challenge fizzled away.

TN came out of the blocks strongly in the second quarter, led by Arvind Kumar Muthukrishnan.

U.P. tried its best through skipper Harsh Dagar and Prince Tyagi to keep pace, but its high-risk approach failed. The northern side converted just six of its 35 attempts from outside the arc.

In contrast, TN was far more effective in that regard. Muin Bek Hafeez nailed a hat-trick of three pointers heading into the break to give TN a 20-point lead (55-35). Hafeez, who top-scored for TN, also converted all four of his two-pointers.

From then on, it was one-way traffic, with U.P. managing just eight points in the third quarter. Hafeez then fittingly scored a fourth three-pointer to take TN past the three-figure mark.

A similar script followed in the women’s semifinals, where reigning champions and favourites Indian Railways comprehensively outplayed Tamil Nadu 88-54 to cruise into the summit clash.

Railways will take on Kerala — which beat Madhya Pradesh 87-58 in the last-four stage — in the final.

The results (semifinals): Women: Kerala 87 (J. Jayalakshmi 20, Sreekala Rani 19, Aneesha Cleetus 17, Kavitha Jose 16) bt Madhya Pradesh 58 (Khushi Pal Singh 22, Ananya Maheshwari 12, Manvi Srivastava 12).

Indian Railways 88 (Pushpa Senthilkumar 22, P. Priyanka 18, K.B. Harshitha 10) bt Tamil Nadu 54 (Ashmitha 19).

Men: Indian Railways 65 (Arvinder Singh 13, Sahaij Pratap Singh Sekhon 13, Palpreet Singh Brar 12, Kanwar Gurbaz Singh Sandhu 10) bt Delhi 53 (Ayush Sharma 17, Jeethandar Singh 11).

Tamil Nadu 102 (Muin Bek Hafeez 22, Arvind Kumar Muthukrishnan 18, Pranav Prince 11, A. Anantharaj 10) bt Uttar Pradesh 53 (Prince Tyagi 15, Harsh Dagar 12).