Qais Omar’s star continued to surge in China and Al Ahli closed out group play with three wins and one loss on Tuesday as they held off Iraq’s Al Shorta 76-74 at the Asia Champions Cup basketball tournament in Chenzhou.
Emirati Omar was the leading scorer for the Dubai side, scoring 26 points on 12-of-21 showing with 17 rebounds. In the four group stage matches he scored 16 points per contest on an excellent 55.4 per cent field percentage with 11.8 rebounds per game as well.
On Tuesday Ahli led by 12 entering the fourth quarter, before Shorta cut it to five with four minutes remaining on Nawres Dhafer’s jumper.
Omar converted back-to-back baskets however to push the lead back to nine with two and a half minutes to go. Dhafer’s three-pointer and four straight free-throws by American import Justin Hawkins, however, had the Iraqi side within two again within the last 90 seconds.
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Former NBA player Sam Young hit all of four of his free-throws down the stretch, though, and Hawkins missed a jumper that would have tied it with eight seconds remaining.
Young, who played primarily with the Memphis Grizzlies during his time in the NBA, scored 22 points on just 5-of-20 shooting, aided by a 12-of-13 effort from the free-throw line. He averaged over 32 points per game in the group round, after scoring 50 in an opening win over Kazakhstan’s Barsy Atyrau. Ahli’s other former NBA man, Cheikh Samb, sat out for the second straight contest injured.
Emirati Moosa Khuwaidem helped pick up the slack, adding 11 points. Hawkins led Shorta with 31 points on 12-of-29 shooting.
Ahli were outshot from three-point range (25 per cent to 19 per cent) and outrebounded heavily (60-42) but their defence forced a staggering 23 Shorta turnovers. While the Iraq club "left it all on the floor and made a last ditch effort to pull the rug from under their foes from the UAE" as the Fiba report put it, Ahli beat them back defensively and 24-year-old Omar in particular proved "he certainly packs quite a punch".
With the win, Ahli have assured themselves second place in Group B behind China’s Xinjiang Flying Tigers, allowing them to bypass the dangerous Group A duo of Iran’s Petrochimi and Lebanon’s Al Riyadi in Friday’s quarter-finals.
The Flying Tigers with one more group match to play, on Wednesday against Malaysia Dragons, are very likely to win and finish a perfect 4-0 in the opening stage. The Dragons, conversely, dropped a 94-61 result to Kazakhstan’s Atyrau in Tuesday’s other Group B match and face elimination.
Eight of the 10 teams in this tournament advance to the quarter-finals. Ahli will face either Qatar’s Al Rayyan (1-3), Chinese Taipei’s Pauian (1-2) or India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (0-3).
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