Lebanon’s National Basketball Team won first place in Group Four of the FIBA Asian Cup qualifiers that will be held in the year 2021, by achieving its second big win against Bahrain on Monday, February 24th.
The Lebanese team won the second match over their Bahrain counterpart with a score of (116-73) and a difference of 43 points at the Nouhad Nawfal Sports Complex in Zouk Mikael.
This was also Lebanon’s second win over Bahrain after winning their first friendly match of King Abdullah II tournament held previously in the Jordanian capital of Amman by winning over their Bahraini counterpart with a score of 72-64.
Lebanon, which ranks 55 globally and 9 continentally, previously defeated Iraq (87-68) on the same basketball count and Bahrain (113th globally and 24th continentally) over India (68-67) in the opening qualifiers.
As Al-Akhbar Newspaper explained, the Lebanese national team under the leadership of National Coach Joe Mujaes and his assistant coach Jad Al-Hajj deserved the victory.
According to the newspaper, the team was able to control the “atmosphere” of the basketball game since its beginning through a pressure attack and a defense that “confused and exhausted” the Bahraini players, especially in light of three-point bulk shoots from the Lebanese team.
The best scorer on the Lebanese team, Elie Chamoun, scored 26 points throughout the game, making him also the player with the most point in the game.
He was followed by Karim Zeinoun and Ali Mansour with 15 points each, then Ater Majok, Ali Haydar, and Aziz Abd al-Masih with 12 points for each of them, Karim Ezzedine with 11 points. and Wael Arakji with 10 points.
During the halftime break, The Lebanese Deaf Basketball team was honored by the Lebanese Deputy Hagop Terzian and Olympic Committee treasurer Rola Assi. The team is trained under the supervision of coach Sarkis Korjian.
The Lebanese Deaf Basketball team was founded by Marc Constantin on November 25th, 2016, with the aim to support deaf players to have the chance in participating in the World Basketball Championships for deaf and show their capabilities.
The arrangement of the five groups qualified for the Asian Cup is now as follows: 1- Lebanon: 4 points, 2- Bahrain: 3 points, 3- India: 3 points, 4- Iraq: 2 points.
