Central Knights were crowned Central Zone Basketball (Cezobal) champions for the first time after overpowering giants, Cougars, 69-63 in a nerve-wrecking final at African Bible College (ABC) In-door Court in Lilongwe on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
The finals were played in the best-of-three series and Knights won 2-1 to end Cougars\u2019 dominance in the region.<\/p>\n
Inspired by the team\u2019s Director, Barlet Mafuleka, who travelled from Zambia to watch the game, Knights were impressive throughout the match.<\/p>\n
Knights dominated the opening two quarters, scoring valuable points through Lucky Makonokaya, Ivor Mulenga and Francis Chongo.<\/p>\n
Cougars upped the tempo in the third quarter and took a five-point lead, thanks to the impressive performances of Limbani Yatina and Takondwa Mengezi.<\/p>\n
But Knights launched a late assault to win the championship in the last five minutes of the game.<\/p>\n
Knights\u2019 Captain Makonokaya, who was also voted as the Most Valuable Player (MVP), said they deserved the championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had self-belief that we can do something positive this year. My teammates were excellent throughout the season and team-work was key to our success,\u201d Makonokaya said.<\/p>\n
His Cougars\u2019 counterpart, Takondwa Mengezi, conceded defeat.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to accept the harsh reality of the game. They fought hard and they deserved it,\u201d Mengezi said.<\/p>\n
In the ladies\u2019 category, Bravehearts were crowned as champions after beating Angels last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Central Knights were crowned Central Zone Basketball (Cezobal) champions for the first time after overpowering giants, Cougars, 69-63 in a nerve-wrecking final at African Bible College (ABC) In-door Court in Lilongwe on Saturday night. The finals were played in the best-of-three series and Knights won 2-1 to end Cougars\u2019 dominance in the region. Inspired by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":34607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34609,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34603\/revisions\/34609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}