By Rey C. Lachica
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Mighty Sports 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 in the end, the newest sports apparel and accessories club team needed a stretch of defensive brilliance in the payoff period to pull off an 85-81 thriller over Al Wahda of Syria and go into the knockout quarterfinal stage still undefeated in the 30th Dubai International Basketball Championship here.
In a game marked by a torrid exchange of offensive spurts – not to mention as too physical – Mighty Sports proved to be smarter and steadier as imports Justin Brownlee and Randolph Morris came out with another stellar showing to the delight of the predominantly Filipino crowd.
Banged up and all, Brownlee topscored for the club co-owned by Alex and Caesar Wongchuking and backed by SMDC, Go For Gold, Oriental Group and Healthcube with 27 points on top of 9 rebounds, three assists and two steals.
The ever popular Brownlee, however, was pulled out with a little over a minute left after a bad fall and was helped out to the bench as he walked gingerly.
Shout 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. But he was later brought to a hospital for further check-up.
For a while, Mighty Sports appeared in danger of absorbing its first win in four games after falling behind by six points, 76-70.
But Roosevelt Adams – also a victim of a rough play early on – touched off and ended 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, so today, we faced a lot of adversities.”
“Offensively, it will take care of itself, but defensively, we got stops when it mattered,” he added. “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 trifectaville while Morris and Jason Brickman combined for 26 points.
The 6-foot-4 Gray electrified the crowd with 4:25 remaining in the second quarter when he dunked over the Syrian giant to tie the count at 33-all.
For topping its group elims, Mighty Sports will face the No. 4 team of the other group in the quarters with Tiu hoping their win over the Syrian club will give his wards a ton of confidence.
The best finish by a PH club in the annual tournament was a runner-up courtesy of the original Gilas squad of Marcus Douthit and Chris Tiu.
The scores:
MIGHTY 85 – Brownlee 27, Adams 21, Morris 19, Brickman 7, Gray 6, Gomez de Liaño 5, Odom 0, Santillan 0, Banal 0
AL WAHDA 81 – Adams 22, Abdullah 16, Alhamwi 13, Arbasha 11, Brown 10, Ali 6, Alosh 3, Hamad 0
Quarterscores: 18-23, 41-41, 60-65, 85-81
