Basketball: Kwara Falcons, First Bank win Bullet championship prizes

The second Bullet Basketball tournament has ended in Lagos with Kwara Falcons and First Bank as winners of the men and women categories respectively.

Falcons, who were trailing with 8 points with less than two minutes to go, recovered well to beat War Lords 69-67.

First Bank were overstretched by MFM but still managed to edge the latter by 52-50.

The bankers took the first quarter 13-4 but MFM recovered to win the second quarter 22-14. First Bank took the third at 13-8 before MFM rallied to win the last 16-12 — but their poor start meant they could not catch up with the winners at the end.

Ochuko Owolabi, MFM coach, had earlier predicted outright victory for his players but admitted that they had high hurdles to overcome.

In the men’s event, Falcons threw in all they had in their reserves to beat a younger side, rounding off the Bullet tournament with the trophy ahead of the NBBF final-8 playoffs which dunked off on Monday night in Lagos.

Also speaking, Akindele Peter, coach of the War Lords, blamed his players’ inexperience for their loss.

“Some of my players are SS3 students and they got carried away by the yelling of fans after we got the game tied up and we paid dearly for it,” Peter said.

The champions got one million naira cash as their prizes.