Al Ahli were humbled by top Chinese club Xinjiang Flying Tigers on Sunday in their second game at the Asia Champions Cup basketball tournament.
Ahli, playing the nominal host side at this tournament (Xinjiang and Chenzhou are, however, 3,850km apart), played a level opening quarter 21-21 and went into half-time down just two.
The Dubai club collapsed in the second half, though, to a 108-79 defeat. Emirati guard Khalifa Salem was second on the team with 15 points (6-of-14 from the field but just 3-of-10 from three-point range) while Emirati big man Qais Omar put in what was probably the team’s most solid effort with eight points and nine rebounds on 4-of-8 shooting.
American former NBA veteran Sam Young, coming off a 50-point showing in Ahli’s opening win over Kazakhstan’s Barsy Atyrau, scored 26 points to lead the team again but shot an inefficient 6-of-23 from the field.
Cheikh Samb, another former NBA player with Ahli, scored 13 points with six rebounds on 5-of-12 shooting.
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Ahli struggled to deal with the Flying Tigers’ pair of American-born foreigners, Darius Adams, a veteran of high-level European ball naturalised to play for Bulgaria, and Andray Blatche, a former NBA stalwart who stars for the Philippines. Adams was 10-of-17 from the field for 22 points, grabbing six rebounds and three assists, while Blatche scored 17 points on a 7-of-13 effort with 11 rebounds and seven assists.
China’s 20-year-old, 7ft 2in Houston Rockets draft pick Zhou Qi scored nine points and collected seven rebounds. Another Chinese national team member, Li Gen, scored 16 on 6-of-8 shooting, including a perfect 3-for-3 from three.
Muhtar Xirelijiang, one of the Flying Tigers’ few Xinjiang natives, added 16 points on 5-of-9 shooting.
The official Fiba write-up of the contest stated in the first half Ahli "had the initiative and seemed like the better team". But Xinjiang's 12-of-24 three-point shooting barrage as a team helped snuff out the challenge from the 2015/16 UAE League runners-up.
Ahli, with one win and one loss, still have a clear path to second in Group B and at least a place in the quarter-finals, as they will be favoured in their final two matches against Iraq’s Al Shorta and Malaysia Dragons.
The quarter-finals, which eight of the ten teams in the tournament will qualify for, are on Friday. The 2016 Champions Cup, the first such tournament since a hiatus after 2013, features Iran’s Petrochimi, Lebanon’s Al Riyadi, Qatar’s Al Rayyan, India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and Chinese Taipei’s Pauian in Group A.
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