The pursuit of the Nigeria Premier Basketball League championship/Basketball Africa League ticket will round off in Port Harcourt on Sunday, with the last tip-off for the NPBL Final Four taking place.
Defending champions Rivers Hoopers and Lagos Legend will play the last march of the Playoffs and this match will determine the champions of the Nigeria Basketball for the 2024/25 season. The winners will also get the BAL ticket.
Both teams won their first two games but surely one of the will taste a lose in the Final-4 series tonight.
This is how it played on Saturday (Day 2). Having lost to Rivers Hoopers on opening day, Gboko City Chiefs desperately needed a win to keep their title hopes alive, but a match-up against Lagos Legends proved too big a task for Coach Alex Ujoh’s side. The encounter began on a slow note for the City Chiefs as they struggled to get points on the board in the first three minutes of action, trailing 6-0, until Kareem Joseph got them going.
From that point, they garnered momentum and began to match Legends’ physicality and aggressiveness. At the end of the first quarter, Legends took a 16-12 lead. In the second, neither side took their foot off the gas. Gboko’s Prosper Onyebuchi hit a game-tying shot on the buzzer with 7:09 to go, giving the Titled men a much-needed lead, and with crucial steals, they held a 34-32 point lead going into the third. Lagos Legends, on the other hand, had 12 turnovers in the first half alone.
The third quarter continued in the same fashion as both sides continued to press, but it was Lagos Legends who regained the lead 45-42 and held on to it, ultimately winning the game 62-49. The result meant that Gboko City Chiefs’ title hopes suffered a huge blow, while Lagos Legends have a chance to dethrone Rivers Hoopers on the final day.
The second game of the day saw Nigeria Customs battle it out with the hosts, Rivers Hoopers. With Lagos Legends grabbing a second win, the KingsMen could not slip.
Nigeria Customs approached the game meaning business, but Rivers Hoopers’ explosive fourth quarter gave them no chance.
John Idoga scored sixteen second-half points to lead defending champions Rivers Hoopers to a 77-45 victory. The fourth quarter saw Hoopers outscore Customs 36-5 as they earned an important victory which puts them on the cusp of a three-peat of NPBL titles.
Peter Olisemeka grabbed a game-high sixteen (16) rebounds along with nine (9) points for a near double-double. Buchi Nwaiwu added twelve (12) rebounds, while Michael Okiki and Mustapha Oyebanji both scored ten (10) points each.
Rivers Hoopers recorded a total of seventy (70) rebounds and sixteen (16) steals, while also forcing Customs to twenty-three (23) turnovers from which the hosts scored thirty-three (33) points, as a testament to the team’s collective effort.
Nigeria Customs will take on Gboko City Chiefs by 3pm, as both teams look to save their face with a first win of the Final Four, while Rivers Hoopers go up against Lagos Legends by 5pm. The Lagosians ended Hoopers’ unbeaten run, which dated back to November 2022, when they pipped the KingsMen 79-80 in overtime on Day Five of the Final Eight.
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