KUWAIT CITY (Kuwait) - Deshawndre Washington showed nerves of steel in the endgame to lift Shabab Al Ahli past Kazma, 68-65, for their second win in a row in the 2025-26 FIBA WASL-Gulf League, Monday night.
The league's Mr. Triple Double showed again that he can be leaned on in the clutch, knocking down a trifecta against a phalanx of defenders to break the 65-all deadlock with only eight-tenths of a second remaining.
He came through on the defensive end as well, blocking the three-point attempt of counterpart Phil Greene as time expired to make sure that the reigning Sub-Zone League champions would escape with another tough win.
'DWash' finished with 18 points on 6-of-11 shooting from the field, alongside 7 rebounds and 14 rebounds plus a steal and a block for a full line to help the UAE powerhouse build their first winning streak of the season.
"That was 30 seconds before the end, and we decided to give the ball to Washington," said Coach Miodrag Perisic of the winning sequence. "We let Washington decide. We missed, but Hamed [Lateef] got the rebound."
"After that, he had three or four seconds to create a shot, and he did," he added proudly.
The do-it-all wing scored 11 of his points in the deciding chapter alone, as he helped restore order after the crew squandered a 48-39 third-quarter lead no thanks to the hot shooting of Greene from beyond the arc.
Shabab Al Ahli stared at 59-58 deficit but Washington quickly erased as much, scoring and assisting in a 7-0 run - capped by a Qais Alshabebi trey off his kick-out - to take the upper hand once more at 65-59 with 3:35.
But Greene and JaJuan Johnson refused to see Kazma quit, spearheading a counter-attack that witnessed the latter hit a triple from near the top of the key to tie the game up at 65-all with only 1:18 to spare.
But then, Washington wielded his magic anew, burying the game-winner off a stepback as he found a way to make something out of a broken play after missing prior - a miss which Hamed Lateef hauled down.
"It's just a shot that I work on," he said of the shot that stunned the home team and its fans that watched live at the Shaikh Saad Alabdullah Sport Hall Complex. "I just happened to make it in the game."
Thanks to his heroics, the efforts of the others such as Assane Boye got preserved. The athletic big man top-scored for Shabab Al Ahli with 24 points, half of which he made in the first quarter, and had 7 rebounds.
Dikembe Dixson chipped in 11 points and 6 rebounds as he played all 40 minutes, fulfilling a key role in helping the club improve to 2-1 and sit at solo second in Group A behind leaders - and budding rivals - Ittihad Club.
Kazma, on the other hand, were led by Johnson with 23 points and 16 rebounds. Greene finished with 21 points, spiked by five threes, together with 5 rebounds and 5 assists as the duo played the entirety of the match.
Ahmad Albaloushi added 10 points on top of 7 rebounds and 6 assists for the Kuwaiti outfit, which absorbed its second loss in a row and fell to 1-2.
FIBA