US Monastir get BAL defence off to easy winning start, REG trounce Kwara Falcons

Jerome Randle

The Basketball Africa League's Sahara Conference continued as expected on Sunday, with no upsets as defending champions US Monastir made light work of newcomers Stade Malien, and REG kept Nigeria's Kwara Falcons under 50 points. Monastir beat the team from Mali 78-68 without breaking too much of a sweat, thanks to Jerome Randle (175-PG-1987, college: California)'s 18 points, a team high. The game high, though, belonged to Souleymane Berthe, who scored 34 of his team's points. Morocco international and Illinois State alum John Wilkins (207-F/C-1989, college: Illinois St.) acknowledged that taking on Monastir was a tough ask for their BAL debut: "The difference was experience. I think they were more experienced than us, but we don't need to be ashamed of our performance. "We have a young, hungry team, and I think for the next games, we will take this game as a lesson and be more confident in ourselves and try to be better."
In the earlier match-up on Sunday, the Rwanda Energy Group, playing in their second BAL, made sure Kwara Falcons were unable to please Nigerian basketball fans, winning 64-48. The low-scoring affair was hardly one for the purists, but REG did the job thanks to Delwan Graham (200-F-1988, college: Jacksonville, agency: BIG) and Cleveland Thomas (192-G-1993, college: WKU, agency: Slash Sports), who scored 16 and 14 respectively. Graham told the media after the game: "We didn't really have too much video to prepare for this team, so we just came out and did what we did best -- what we've been working on the last few weeks or so. We came out there as a team and gave it all." The stat of the day, though, has to be the 3-points made percentage, with neither team managing to surpass 16 percent.
Courtesy of: espn.com

Tags : JEROME RANDLE, U.S. MONASTIR, TUNISIAN BASKETBALL