Nigerian champions, Rivers Hoopers of Port Harcourt, at the weekend, lost by 89 points to 81 to Tunisia’s US Monastir in one of the classification games of the 2025 Basketball Africa League (BAL) finals, which is taking place in Pretoria, South Africa.
The loss pitted Rivers Hoopers against APR Rwanda in today’s quarterfinals, while US Monastir booked a date with defending champions, Petro de Luanda in another quarterfinal game.
Saturday’s game saw Rivers Hoopers’ Raphael Putney scoring a BAL career-high 28 points along with seven rebounds.
Putney stole the show in a tightly contested first quarter during, which both teams exchanged leads nine times, as he led from the front with 10 points to his name before Madut Akec scored a three-pointer in the final seconds of the first quarter to hand Rivers Hoopers a 2-point lead at 16-14.
Ahmed Doumbia scored seven points in two minutes midway through the second quarter to stretch the KingsMen’s lead to six points at 27-21.
Michael Okiki then found Madut Akec on a fast break for the South Sudanese forward to net an easy score with one of the best plays of the first half as Rivers Hoopers led by four points at halftime with the score at 36-32.
Putney, who scored 16 first-half points, stayed hot at the start of the third quarter, sinking back-to-back threes to stretch the lead to nine points. But Monastir responded quickly with hot hands from Andrew Edogi, Patrick Hardy Jr., and Osiris Eldridge who scored in quick successions from the bench to rattle the KingsMen and steal a four-point lead at the end of the third quarter.
US Monastir scored a whopping 41 points from the bench, compared to Rivers Hoopers’ 19.
The fourth quarter belonged to BAL elevate star, Babacar Sane who ran the show for Monastir as the 2022 champions opened up a 13-point lead and never looked back.
Ahmed Doumbia brought some cheers to the crowd when he drilled in a buzzer-beating three-pointer from deep to cut the deficit to eight points, as Monastir held on for an 89-81 win.
Earlier, in Saturday’s first classification game, defending champions Petro de Luanda of Angola lost to APR Rwanda 57-75.
