Recap
Final (12:00 PM-1:00 PM) Sunday, Jun 8, 2008
Tamjeed
Adiyat
  1 2 T
Tamjeed (6-2-0) 27 34 61
Adiyat (0-8-0) 21 19 40

Playing Out The Season Jun 9, 2008
by Teepu Khawja  

Entering this 1st round game at 5-2 with the 3rd seed after a brief stint at #1, Tamjeed was looking to regain the momentum they had mounted after a 5-game winning streak in the regular season. Adiyat also had a streak going in the regular season, but it was the opposite and one whose momentum they wanted to break; namely a 7-game losing streak and a winless regular season.

The start of the game may have had outsiders confusing Adiyat for Tamjeed and vice versa. Adiyat came out SMOKING (relatively), up 5-2 with 18:20 left after a Raj 3-pointer and then up 8-3 after another Raj 3-pointer with 17:30 left in the half. In the meantime, Tamjeed’s only points were coming off of free throws; in fact, their first 2-point basket didn’t come along until 4:30 into the half after a basket by Wayne. At this point they were still down 10-6. Luckily for them, and not a good sign for Adiyat, the latter was hacking away early and bailed out Tamjeed by putting them in the bonus situation with 15 (!!) minutes still left in the 1st half.

Balance seemed to once again be restored in the universe when Camran tied the game for Tamjeed at 10-10 with 14 minutes left. But Adiyat still had some fight in them as Manny’s basket put them up 14-10 with 12:30 left in the half. Tamjeed’s Kadva tied the game again at 14-14 at the 11:15 mark, followed shortly by free throws from Amer that gave Tamjeed their 1st lead of the game with 10 minutes to go. At this point, Tamjeed slowly started turning the screws and playing like they should have been from the start; they extended their lead to 19-15 with 7:00 left, and then, thanks to Adiyat’s continued hacking, found themselves in double bonus with 5 minutes still to go. The half ended on free throws by Wayne, giving his team a 27-21 lead behind his 8 points. On the flip side, Adiyat was lead by Manny and Raj’s 6 points each.

The second half summary won’t have as much detail because there isn’t as much to report. Adiyat was forced to call a timeout with 18:39 left in the game as they felt it getting away behind Tamjeed’s 5-0 run to extend the half-time score to 32-21. The timeout only helped Tamjeed however as they continued their run to 11-0 to make the score 38-21 with 14:36 left. Adiyat just seemed too tired to maintain their good start and the game kept slipping; they were forced to call their final timeout with 4:11 left and down 54-36.

The game ended with Tamjeed winning easily by a score of 61-40 behind Sanel and Kadva’s 13 points each. Adiyat’s season ended with this season’s Most Improved Player Manny scoring 14 points. Next week Tamjeed faces Zilzal in a much anticipated rematch of the season’s first week “massacre” in which Zilzal easily disposed of the former.