Basketball: J&K enters semis of Kalinga Trophy

Excelsior Sports Correspondent
JAMMU, Jan 2: Jammu and Kashmir State Men’s Basketball team defeated Madhya Pradesh by 11 points in quarterfinal of Kalinga Trophy (Level II) to seal berth in the semifinals in the ongoing 65th Senior National Basketball Championship, being organized by the Basketball Federation of India and supported by IMG-Reliance at Bhilwara in Rajasthan.
J&K will lock horns with Gujarat in the semifinal of Kalinga Cup tomorrow.
Earlier, the players both the teams played brilliantly ended the first half (34-25), with J&K leading the score. Finally, Jammu and Kashmir won the match with the scores reading (61-50) in favour of J&K. Sumit Kumar was the star performer, who scored 24 points, while  Iqbal Singh, Shubham Sharma and Shalinder Singh scored 15, 14 and 8 points respectively.
The winners of the Championship will take home Rs 1,00,000 while the first and second runners-up will receive Rs 75,000 and Rs 50,000 respectively. The rest of the teams will be playing the qualifying league in the Pools ‘C,D,E,F’ for a chance to be promoted to Level 1 for the 66th Senior National Basketball Championship.