Dubai Basket remains unbeaten in ABA League
Dubai Basketball continued it’s unbeaten run in the ABA League with an away win yesterday against Romanian champions U-BT Cluj-Napoca in a game that was played in front of a sold out crowd in the BT Arena.
The team from Dubai arrived in Transilvania after a defeat suffered on Thursday at home against Virtus Bologna in the EuroLeague. It was a painful defeat for Jurica Golemac’s team against a direct competitor for a spot in the EuroLeague playoffs (or at least a play-in spot). On their side, U-BT had a home game in the EuroCup on Tuesday against Hamburg (won 103-92), so they had more time to rest.
The game started with a very high tempo, and McKinley Wright was the star of the 1st quarter, scoring 15 points and helping his team to a 26-31 lead. The game continued with the same fast pace, and the home team made a 10-0 start to start to 2nd quarter and took a 36-31 lead. The team from the UAE managed to recover and entered the half-time break with a 52-56 lead. The 3rd quarter brought another very even battle between the two teams as Dubai kept the 4-point lead after 30 minutes of play. In the last quarter, the visiting team managed to get a double-digit lead that kept increasing, and in the end, Dubai won with a 17-point difference (93-110).
McKinley Wright and Mfiondu Kabengele lead the winning team in scoring with 24 points each, Dwayne Bacon added 18, while Dzanan Musa came back after injury with a 13-point performance. For the home team, Mitch Creek impressed once again with 33 points, and center Dusan Miletic had another solid game with 13 points.
With this win, Dubai leads the standings in Group A of the ABA League with a perfect 13-0 record, but will have another difficult week in the EuroLeague as they will play in Barcelona on Tuesday and in Paris on Thursday, two very important and very difficult tests.
On the other side, U-BT will also have a very important game as they will travel to Ljubljana to play against Cedevita on Tuesday in the EuroCup, where they hope to get one of the first two places in the group that would qualify them directly to the quarterfinals.
Gratian Cormos
Photo credit: Dubai Basketball
