Lebanese Basketball Championship - Men Division One - Regular Season 2005/06

Starters:      Lamine Diawara - Elie Mechantaf - Bassem Balaa - Fady Khatib - Kenny Satterfield
Substitutes: Paul Khoury - Rodrigue Nacouzi - Joe Ghattas - George Chibani
                  Yervant Avakian - Robert Boudagher
 

What we witnessed today might well be an alarm awakening call in the best optimistic luck, or the season's tolling bell in the worst case scenario!
In any alternative, being unable to deal with a zone defense for about 3 quarters is close to impossible, yet it happened tonight.

Blue Stars were efficient, tight, focused and determined, while Sagesse players seemed hanging on a loose rope and seemingly unaware about what to apply on court. Knowing that Sagesse striking weapon is its offense –well over 92 points average per game so far- tonight's 72 points clearly indicate that the Greens even missed their offensive power. When it is notoriously known by now that the team's main concern under the helm of the new coach is to work on its defense, losing the offensive edge is close to a death wish!
And granted a wish it was, losing the game and retracting in the league standings to the 3rd position.

Nowhere throughout the game did Sagesse take the lead or impose its rhythm and system, but they were rather working on a come back and mainly on finding the solution to the zone defense applied by their opponents early enough in the game's first half.
There simply was no key to the zone defense and the arc shooting was dramatically low tonight, reaching 23% with as much as 3 hits out of 23 attempts!
The inside play wasn't in better shape since the players were having hard time in penetrating Blue Stars paint, and although achieving an edge on the offensive rebound, yet they weren't able to score.

The game was definitely sealed in the 3rd quarter during which Sagesse scored a mere 8 points, and soon the game's stake revolved around the league's 2nd spot since it became obvious early enough that Sagesse wasn't going to win the day!

To reach such stake and moreover being unable to secure it raises a serious question mark about the outcome of future games and even the league's end result!
Is it the players' defeatism ? Is it the coach's misreading his players' profiles and assets? Or is it both ?
The league being still at the beginning of the 2nd leg is an un-hoped for opportunity that mustn't be wasted at any cost ! There's much work to be underdone and quickly to find the right answers to the right questions, and maybe what is most important to rightly diagnose the disease, otherwise all healing attempts would be vain remedies!