Muslim Basketball

Looked incredible to start the season before getting humbled by Jakarta and again by a far more respectable team in Kabul. Overall, body of work makes me fairly confident in the upside of this group. Unbelievable fire power and essentially can wins games behind five guys. Haven’t had the opportunity to see many of their games of late, but I like their offensive balance and how it keeps defenses extremely off balance. I hope they have a full team and show what their made of in their last tune up against Dhaka before games really matter.

Upset of the year in my opinion was a full Sarajevo team losing to Jakarta, no one expected it. But teams have bad days and Sarajevo had theirs. This team is loaded offensively and as the season progresses I expect them to get better as their chemistry grows.

A lot of teams in this league have looked out of wack when one of their top guys are out. No Leonard for Sarajevo, 30 point win against a then 3-1 team. That’s less a hit on Leonard and more a testament to how explosive this group is. Monster game from Luke, Michael keeps doing the little things that keeps this offense rolling, Rameez didn’t have a great game, but it didn’t really matter. They held the Riyadh backcourt to 36 points on 37 shots. This steamroller might not feel another bump until they take on Kabul. Next REAL challenge will be the finale against Dhaka.

Really really wish they played that game against Kazan. That week one win against Cordoba was impressive. Even though they haven’t played good teams after, they’ve remained dominant and showed that they have the explosiveness to cause serious problems.

Not the best of first halves, followed it up with a dominant effort in the second. If I recall, Fez only scored 2 points in the first 10 minutes of the second half. By no means is Fez a great team, but holding any team to just a couple points across such a long spread is a tremendous defensive effort. Offensively, they’re just so talented. The entire lineup can score on their own, when they play as a unit they are even more effective. It’s no fluke that they have put up 76 and 75 in their first two games played. 

They robbed us of what would have been an early heavyweight matchup by not having enough guys to play against Kazan. It’s still early, but that would have been a pretty insightful game into seeing who is the best in the league. Week one, they gave Cordoba (a very solid team in their own right) the business, getting all their 76 points from four scorers. I don’t know too much about John Hassert, but Leonard, Michael, and Rameez are three of the better players in this league. If they show up consistently, this isn’t a group the should be taken lightly.