Shahrdary Gorgan spoil Sagesse's FIBA WASL debut

GHAZIR (Lebanon) - Shahrdary Gorgan handed Sagesse a harsh welcome to the FIBA West Asia Super League (WASL) following a dominant conquest on the road, 86-74, for a successful start to their Season 2 campaign, Wednesday night at the Ghazir Club Stadium.

Hardly affected by the partisan crowd that filled up the venue, the Season 1 West Asia League runners-up broke away early and cruised to the victory in a lopsided start to the sub-zone league.

Game heroes: Will Cherry led the Iranian side with a game-high 26 points, on top of 3 rebounds, 4 assists, a steal, and a block to submit a full line in 38 minutes of action.

Sina Vahedi was also impactful as the floor general came through with 23 points spiked by five triples, together with 4 rebounds and 5 assists - including the highlight play of the night that saw him finish a transition play with a lob to Norvel Pelle for the alley-oop jam in the second period.

STEP AHEAD Player of the Game: Arsalan Kazemi earned STEP AHEAD Player of the Game honors as he finished with a game-best efficiency rating of 28 behind his 8 points and 18 rebounds - two away from the league record he himself set - along with 4 assists, 2 steals, and 1 block.

Turning point: Gorgan ran towards an 18-8 start into the game and that proved to be the beginning of a one-sided affair. The backcourt tandem of Vahedi and Cherry joined hands in the second period to give themselves the 44-28 advantage entering the halftime break.

Their lead rose to as high as 22 points, 63-41, following a Cherry three-pointer off a Kazemi assist with 3:32 remaining in the third quarter.

Stats don't lie: Although there wasn't much disparity in the rebounding battle (46-44 for Gorgan), Gorgan hauled down 20 offensive boards and scored 23 points off second chances.

They said: "We had a strategy for the game but the most important part of our game was the performance of our players. For the most part I want to mention that we controlled the tolerance of our game." - Mostafa Hashemi, Head Coach, Shahrdary Gorgan

"We kinda knew that if we started the game well, we're gonna take the crowd out of it. That's what we did. We started pretty strong and I think that led us to the end of the game and we were able to pull it off." - Arsalan Kazemi, Shahrdary Gorgan

"They led the game for 39 minutes. We couldn't put the game plan that we worked on. About my team, we made a lot of mistakes. We have to watch the game again. We have to make a lot of adjustments for the upcoming games." - Jad El Hajj, Head Coach, Sagesse

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