DUBAI INT’L Mighty sweeps elims
DUBAI – Mighty Sports-Philippines produced several big plays early in the game highlighted by a towering dunk by Fil-Am Jeremiah Gray over Syrian 7-foot-2 Abdulwahab Al Hamm, but had to rely on key defensive gems in the end to pull off the victory.
Mighty Sports needed a stretch of defensive brilliance in the payoff period to preserve an 85-81 thriller over Al Wahda of Syria and go into the knockout quarterfinal stage of the
30th Dubai International Basketball Championship still undefeated.
In a game marked by an exchange of offensive spurts and extreme physicality, Mighty Sports banked on imports Justin Brownlee and Randolph Morris to save the day.
Banged up and all, Brownlee scored 27 points on top of 9 rebounds, three assists and two steals for the club coowned by Alex and Caesar Wongchuking and backed by SMDC, Go For Gold, Oriental Group and Healthcube.
Brownlee, however, was pulled out with a little over a minute left after a bad fall and was helped to the bench hobbling.
Shouts of “Ginebra! Ginebra!” reverberated inside the Shabab Al Ahli Club as Brownlee waved to the crowd to assure his adoring fans that he was just fine. He was later brought to a hospital for some tests.
For a while, Mighty Sports appeared in danger of suffering its first win in four games after falling behind, 76-70.
But Roosevelt Adams – also a victim of a rough play early on – presided over a decisive 14-0 salvo with booming treys to regain the initiative. In that run, Brownlee added a triple of his own.
“I’m just happy with the win,” Mighty coach Charles Tiu said. “We talked about it at the start of the tournament. I told the team that we still haven’t faced adversity, and that when the time comes we have to stick together. Today, we faced a lot of adversities.”
He added: “Offensively, it will take care of itself, but defensively, we got stops when it mattered. We played through the crazy officiating today. I mean a lot of bogus calls, the players were so upset, but it’s part of it, so that’s why I call this a character win.”
Adams finished with 21 points on 3-of-4 shooting from the 3-point range while Morris and Jason Brickman combined for 26 points.