Basketball: International friendly-Seychelles teams in tomorrow’s finals |19 July 2011

The women’s side will cross swords with the Mozambique team once again after losing 40-81 to the visitors on Sunday at the Palais des Sports.

Although the Seychelles game cannot be compared to that of Mozambique, playing the likes of Ngulala, Cossa, Silva, Azinheir and Dongue will surely help them add speed, precision and intelligence to their play as they prepare to challenge Madagascar, Reunion, Mauritius and Mayotte for the gold medal at the IOIG.

Mozambican captain Ngulala led all scores in Sunday’s match with 16 points and the Mozambique team had two other players – Dongue (15 points) and Cossa (11) – scoring in double figures.

Veteran Williana Dubois was the Seychelles ‘A’ team’s top scorer with nine points including a trey, while Dynah Louis added eight.

Coach Philip Arissol’s Seychelles ‘A’ team won their other match 69-38 against the Seychelles ‘B’ side, who also lost 18-103 to coach Luis Lopez’s Mozambique.

Sunday’s semifinal presented the Seychelles ‘A’ men’s team with an opportunity to avenge a 53-67 opening day loss to Mozambique.

Seychelles really deserved their morale-boosting 62-53 semifinal win, but some dubious decisions against the Mozambicans by the officials in crunch time, kind of took some of the gloss off coach Clifford Joubert’s team’s success. In Wednesday’s final, Seychelles ‘A’ will meet the Italian selection.

“They (the Italians) owe us big time,” said coach Joubert, who needs to instil some discipline on his bench and take more of the coaching responsibilities from French technical advisor Dominique Guéret.

Abdel Sylla paced the Seychelles ‘A’ team with 15 points and Steven Servina got 12 off the bench as the team gave shooting guard Bernard Bristol, who fouled out, a nice 34th birthday present. 

Playmaker Nigel Sinon also fouled out, while Reggie Ah-kong sat out most of the match with a knee injury suffered when fouled by a Mozambican player when attempting a 3-pointer. Amadou Sylla also left the court for a while after being elbowed and he received four stitches on his right eyebrow before returning to play.

Mandlate finished with 14 points and Muchate added 11 for Mozambique who questioned almost every call by the trio of Seychellois referees.

Meanwhile, in the other semifinal, the Italian selection banked 13 3-pointers on their way to a 98-75 victory against the Seychelles ‘B’ squad coached by Nigel Ah-kong.

Italian Ottocento connected from behind the 3-point line three times for nine of his 20 points, while Timmy Adam had the hot hands for the Seychelles ‘B’ team with 25 points.

In the round-robin league, Seychelles ‘B’ also lost 38-67 to Seychelles ‘A’ and 45-74 to Mozambique, while Mozambique beat Italy 74-56. Seychelles ‘A’ also lost 66-74 to the Italians.

G. G.