NAGPUR: City cagers Sameeksha Chandak and Gunjan Mantri, and Pune’s Aanaya Bhavsar played pivotal roles as Maharashtra girls won the youth national basketball championship which concluded in Indore on Tuesday. The national championship to pick the Indian team was organized by the Basketball Federation of India (BFI).
In an exciting summit clash, Maharashtra defeated hosts Madhya Pradesh 79-75 with the quarter-wise scores reading 24-16, 21-26, 21-19, 13-14. For the winners, Aanaya scored a game-high 25 points and pulled 25 rebounds. She was assisted by Gunjan (19), Muskan Singh of Raigad (14) and Sameeksha (13). Much like Aanaya, Sameeksha too had a double-double when she pulled as many as 14 rebounds in addition to her 13 points.
Earlier in the semifinals, Maharashtra girls rallied splendidly to outplay Karnataka 93-72. While Karnataka started aggressively and at one stage took a handy 22-point (31-9) lead in the first half, Maharashtra girls turned the things in their favour with a dominant display after the change of ends.
The quarter-wise progress for Maharashtra read 9-29, 22-17, 26-5, 36-21. While the Pune-Nagpur duo of Aanaya and Sameeksha continued their heroic display by yet another double double in the national championship, Muskan (16), Gunjan (12) and Sara Chopde (16) came up with timely contributions in Maharashtra’s win. In the semifinal, Aanaya was perfect under the glass by scoring 36 points and 30 rebounds, Sameeksha netted 12 points and pulled 21 rebounds.
In the earlier games, Maharashtra girls came up with a dominant show by recording facile victories over Delhi 74-47, Chandigarh 82-53, Rajasthan 81-69 and Tamil Nadu 88-71 respectively.
While Maharashtra girls won all the games they played in the seven-day nationals, their boys counterparts lost all their league round matches. For the first time in Maharashtra’s basketball history their boys U-16 team has been relegated to the lower pool.
Apart from Sameeksha and Gunjan, Rajvi Maladhari was the other city player in the 12-member Maharashtra squad. The state team was picked after the inter-district tournament which Nagpur girls won recently in Dhule.
