SCR chug into Sam semifinals

South Central Railway (SCR) subdued Saints 7941 in the quarter-finals of the third Samuel Vasanth Kumar memorial invitation flood-lit prize money basketball tournament at YMCA Secunderabad on Thursday night. At halftime, the winner led 42-25.

The railway side showed all the qualities of a champion squad, coached by former junior international K. Vishal Kumar. In the first quarter, it laid the foundation of a sound defence, separating itself by a slender margin at 1713. But that was how close it allowed Saints to come.

Quarter II was about consolidation, as SCR logged 25 against Saints’

12. It pumped up the pace in the subsequent sessions, recording 20 against its adversary’s eight while in the last 10 minutes it registered 18 against Saints’ 8.

Saints simply couldn’t stop SCR’s forward Vijay Kumar, who forayed into the opponent’s citadel at will to score a whopping 30 points. Santosh Mani, the tall Railway point guard, was also hard to contain, sinking a trio of three pointers in his individual contribution of 19.

Height and experience held Customs & GST in good stead in the next last eight encounter as it got the better of Young Men’s Guild 92-84. That pivot Venkat Reddy had as many as four tip-ins showed the proximity the Customs men had to their rival’s backboard.

THE RESULTS

(all quarterfinals) SCR 79 (Vijay Kumar 30, Santosh Mani 19, Kaushik 10) bt Saints 41 (Pratik Gona 11) HT: 42-25; Customs & GST 92 (M. Vijay Kumar 41, Venkat Reddy 15, M. Harish Chowdary 17) bt Young Men’s Guild 84 (Prudhvishwar Reddy 24, Chris Veeresh and Sai Krishna 19) HT: 43-41; Eagles Club

63 (Aman 24, Venkat 14, Abhishek

13) bt Nizam Basketball Academy

44 (Majid 30) HT: 48-27.