Punjab men send defending champion Uttarakhand packing

Chennai, Jan 22 (PTI): Punjab beat Uttarakhand 70-68 in the men's quarterfinals today to knock the defending champion out of the 68th Senior National Basketball Championship here.

It was a close contest between the two sides in which fortunes fluctuated in each quarter. Punjab squeezed ahead in the first part of the match, but their rivals roared back as they led by one point at the half-way stage.

Though Uttarakhand took the honours in the third quarter, Punjab got home thanks to a strong showing in the final quarter.

The top scorer for Punjab was Jagdeep Singh with 16 points while Yadwinder Singh logged 22 points for Uttarakhand.

Kerala, the defending champion in the women's section, continued to march ahead. Taking on Delhi in the quarterfinal, they came up another superb performance to romp home 63-42.

P S Jeena led the way for Kerala with 21 points.

They scored well in the first two quarters to take control of the match and got through comfortably in the end.

Despite captain Raspreet Sindhu's impressive performance to score 24 points, Delhi came up short.

In another quarterfinal encounter, Karnataka rode on P Priyanka's 22 points to beat Uttar Pradesh 78-63.

Vaishnavi Yadav's 35 points went in vain for UP as they couldn't catch up with their rivals after falling behind early.

Earlier, the Tamil Nadu women got the better of West Bengal 84-50 to reach the quarterfinals with V Srividhya scoring 17 points.

In the men's section, Kerala fell to Chandigarh in the pre-quarterfinals, losing 70-83. The top scorer for Chandigarh was Ravi Bhardwaj with 24 points