Africa-Press – Lesotho. Defending champions KTA All Stars got their Major League Basketball (MLB) season back on track with a 72-22 thumping of Razzmatazz last Saturday. The game was one of two MLB games played last weekend with Shooting Rifles coming out victorious over Simply Talent in the other men’s league match while no ladies matches were played.
KTA All Stars needed the win after suffering a surprise defeat to Lerotholi Polytechnic in their previous game and they were clearly motivated against an upstart Razzmatazz side. KTA were superior in all departments.
They were first to every ball and their squad depth coupled with vast experience simply overwhelmed Razzmatazz who looked relieved at the end of the game because the 72-22 final score could have been worse.
Likano Mphuthi scored 15 points for the champions, while Tšepo Mohapi added nine as KTA cruised and after the game KTA captain Ratšolo Molupe said their depth and mix of experience and fresh legs worked in their favour.
Molupe added that it was important for KTA to return to winning ways after their loss to Lerotholi Polytechnic. “Our team has experience, we have fresh legs and we have some young guys and old guys; we have a mix of everything,” he said.
“We have depth. At some point we were able to sub in the whole bench and put in fresh legs.
(Razzmatazz) couldn’t figure out what we were trying to do, we put pressure on their good ball handlers to make tough looks for them,” Molupe continued.
The day’s second game, however, was not as straightforward. Shooting Rifles were obvious favourites and it helped that they seemed to respect their opponents as they earned a hard-fought 56-40 win.
Although their captain Motloli Mothepu was not entirely pleased with the team’s performance, he was happy they were able to get the win over a pesky Simply Talent side.
“We need to work on our defence, we need to work on our communication, we need to work on handling principles so that we keep hold of the ball, and those are the important things we need to focus on,” Mothepu said.
“Apart from that, there is a saying in basketball that offence takes care of itself,” the experienced playmaker added.
“We believe that because, in the end, we outscored our opponents even though we did not play that well on offence. We won our game because of what we did on defence.”
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