As part of the WASL competition, Lebanese basketball team Sagesse suffered a disappointing defeat on their home court in Ghazir, against the formidable Iranian opponents, Gorgan. The final score of 74-86 in favor of the visitors highlighted a below-par performance on the part of the Lebanese team.
Despite a promising start to the season with three consecutive wins in the Lebanese league, Sagesse failed to maintain their usual level in this match. The match got off to a difficult start for the Lebanese club, who were largely dominated by the might of Gorgan, last year’s defending cup champions.
When asked about the biggest problem behind their crushing defeat in their first FIBA WASL appearance on Wednesday night, Sagesse coach Jad El Hajj did not hesitate to respond, “We have this problem. We have to solve it.”
“It’s clear. Second-chance points,” the seasoned mentor retorted at the post-game press conference following their 86-74 defeat at Ghazir Club Stadium.
Although the stat sheet shows that the rebounding battle was close, with a score of 46-44 in favor of the visiting team, Gorgan grabbed 20 offensive rebounds and scored 23 points on second chances. In comparison, Sagesse got 17 offensive rebounds and scored just 15 points on second chances.
“They got 20 offensive rebounds, which was really important in the game, and they scored 23 points from these opportunities,” Hajj lamented. “Those are points we could have controlled.”
Hajj admitted that this is really a problem for his team, and that it couldn’t have happened at a worse time, occurring in their very first game in the FIBA WASL-West Asia League.
“They ran the game for 39 minutes. We couldn’t implement the game plan we had been working on. As far as my team is concerned, we made a lot of mistakes. We need to review the game. We need to make several adjustments for the upcoming matches,” Hajj went on to say.
Sagesse has a chance to recover as they prepare to face Iraq’s “Al Naft Club” and Syria’s “Al Ahli d’Alep” in upcoming matches.
