Recap
Final (10:00 AM-11:00 AM) Saturday, Jun 24, 2006
Quraysh
Sharh
  1 2 T
Quraysh (4-5-0) 13 15 28
Sharh (4-4-1) 13 21 34

Playing small ball Jun 28, 2006
by Teepu Khawja  

Quraysh entered this game with a relatively surprising 4th place finish this season and on a 2-game winning streak. Sharh managed to squeak into the playoffs after a very poor start that saw them begin the season with 3 losses in their first 4 games and the 4th decision being a tie. In their meeting this season Sharh managed to win 41-40 in OT.

In my playoff preview, I said that for Sharh to win this game, they were going to have to provide Ibrahim Baig with a lot more offensive help as in their loss to Quraysh only one other player hit double digits and the team shot 2-11 from behind the 3-point arc. I also said that Quraysh will need to stay calm and play disciplined, Abdi is going to have to be an offensive threat, and the team is going to have to learn to play well for the entire 40 minutes and not just the first 20 minutes and the last 5 minutes.

How did my prediction go? Well only Ibrahim hit double digits for his team, but the pace was such that it was enough for his team to pull out the 34-28 win this time. The half-time score of this game was 13-13 as both teams played aggressively but did not do much offensively. Neither teams were making big mistakes, the pace was just that. This game was back and forth throughout until Sharh seemed to pull away with Quraysh being forced to call a timeout with only 2:45 to go and down 32-26. Unfortunately the nothing really materialized after the timeout as they were forced to foul and let Sharh shoot bonus free throws. And in such a low scoring game, these free throws were huge as Sharh converted on 10-12 FTs just between Ibrahim B and Ibrahim T. Unfortunately for Qursaysh their key offensive threat, Abdi Mohammed, just didnt seem to be able to get anything going offensively for his team. Compounding this problem was the absence of Quraysh's big man, Lucus Halliwell, the East's leading rebounder. No doubt his presence down low would have helped his team greatly in this low scoring affair.

With the win, Sharh advanced to play 1st place Nasr.