Nesma, Saipem face off for Inter-Company B title; Clippers outgun BEWA

ALKHOBAR: An expected close battle between two strong contenders in the 15th UFBF Basketball tournament ended in an easy victory for coach Fred Ticong’s Nesma & Partners team as they crushed last season’s defending champion but overmatched SAAD Mechanical 101-47 last Friday at Al Qadisia gymnasium.
Cresente Generaole topscored with 15 points while three other starters in Rodelio Villasista, Ismael Batutay and Sotico Adlawan finished in double digits to power Nesma into the finals against Saipem which beat another former champion, Al Falak, 82-75, in the other semifinals match.
SAAD’s leading scorer Allan Lacaba struggled on the floor for a low 11 points and failed to get enough support from his teammates. After falling behind 26-41 end of first half, the SAAD offense was seemingly overshadowed by Nesma’s total dominance.
In contrast, coach Art Caliboso’s Saipem team had to deal with the strong challenge by last season’s runner-up, Al Falak, before cruising to victory.
Falak actually led the first two quarters behind ace guard Jonathan Marinas who pumped in 16 of his 27 points and was ably backed by center Ali Al Khaledi who hauled down offensive rebounds and put in 8 of his 10 points at the half.
Still down by 6 points, 37-43, 5:01 left in the third quarter, Saipem’s Montegrande, John Supan and Paul Matala stepped up and knotted the game 43-43 on Matala’s split charity. Herbert Abasanta then completed a steal and took the lead 45-43. Saipem ended the third quarter ahead at 52-48. Edwin Espiritu, Richard Labitad and John Supan conspired in a 12-7 Saipem run in the last quarter to keep Al Falak at bay.
Abasanta topscored for Saipem with 25 points, Montegrande and Supan tallied 18 points apiece while Labitad added 9.
Meanwhile, Sancho Sandoval’s Clippers team was back in its usual form beating the equally formidable BEWA team of Erickson Amores, 111-104, in junior D3 higher category.
James Chua, 22, and employed as fitness instructor, had a monster peformance of 32 points while sweet-shooting and former back-to-back MVP Mark Vergara 17. The comebacking Joey Navarro added 19 points, another former MVP Jerome Lazaro had 11 while Win Mangulabnan chipped in 9 markers for Clippers.
For the BEWA’s side, Julius Eleazar led all scorers with 35 points, Noy Credo added 25 while Marvin Ceniza and Michael Etrata scored 20 and 11 points respectively.

Coached by Homer Pascual, Clippers exploded off the gates to take a 30-14 lead after the first 10 minutes via Vergara’s back-to-back threes and baskets from Chua. They looked to have broken the game wide open in the second quarter as their lead ballooned to 18 points, 38-20, at the 7:33 mark following a three from Vergara. However, BEWA refused to go without a fight as they engineered a 12-2 counter attack anchored on the inside shooting of Eleazar to even lead by a point, 52-51 going into the third quarter with Credo and Ceniza adding 8 more points each in that period