By Gracious Akujobi
Kano Pillars Basketball team beat hard fighting Mark Mentors to win the Savannah Conference of the DSTV Basket Ball league.
The game was played at the indoor sports hall of the National Stadium Abuja and it saw Kano Pillars prevail 76-74 points to win the Savannah conference back-to-back.
The victorious coach of Kano Pillars, Ibrahim Maku, has boasted of the superiority of his team over all the teams playing in the Savannah conference while expecting his boys to do well for the Lagos challenge.
“We are happy for this win, we have finished with this side our focus is now to go to Lagos and prepare to play with the same tempo we used here. The encouragement from our State Government is good for the morale of the team”
Most of their fans where worried the boys will not play well due to the fasting and coach Maku has this to say;
“I am pleased with the boys, imagine at this stage of our fasting yet they put up this wonderful performance, it is commendable” he added.
Meanwhile, coach of Mark Mentors blamed their defeat on lack of last minute concentration from his team
“We will go back to the drawing board to identify where the lapses are. We need to work on these lapses to build the players mentality, to train ourselves how to be disciplined with the ball.
“We lost this match because we were not disciplined enough to the end, we cut down 19-20 points lead so that means that as a team we have to work on our last minute concentration”
In the losers final, Plateau Peaks defeated Niger Potters 72-63 to come third.
Kano Pillars and Mark Mentors will represent the Savannah conference against teams from the Atlantic conference in the Lagos playoffs.
