By SAMMY KITULA
Posted Wednesday, April 7 2010 at 20:25
East Africa Secondary School Games girls’ basketball champions, Shimba Hills and Maseno School both recorded successive wins in the on going national school games at Upper Hill High School.
Shimba Hills humiliated Alliance Girls 91-17, while Maseno were the better side against Nairobi International School, winning 76-65.
Mabera School from Nyanza taught North Eastern Province Girls a basketball lesson with a 110-05 final score, while Alliance Boys defeated Wajir Boys 126-12 in yet another one-sided affair.
Mwijabu Mwidadi wants to be considered an integral part of the Shimba Hills’ future and Wednesday’s performance against Alliance High School was a good start.
Mwidadi had a career-high 18 points and grabbed five rebounds, helping the defending champions to a 91-17 victory over Alliance for their second win in the games. She played 33 minutes off the bench, adding two steals, a block and an assist.
Help the team
“I was just glad to be out there, trying to help the team any way I could,” said Mwidadi, who shot five of nine from the field and scored all her points in the second half.
“For guys like me, who don’t get a bunch of opportunities, you got to make the most of any time you’re on the floor, whether it’s a blowout win, blowout loss, it doesn’t matter.”
Zipporah Khasoa had 18 points and nine rebounds, and Fatma Mohammed scored 12 for the champions who are yet to lose a match since April last year.
“It’s a lot of fun when you’re hitting on all cylinders,” said Shimba’s coach, Robert Aran. “It feels good when you’re out there having fun and everything is going your way.”
Agai Atieno had 10 points and Achieng Okoth scored once for Alliance, who had shocked North Eastern Province 101-03 on Tuesday.
Alliance did not hit the boards and this trend continued for the rest of game as normally high scoring Mwende Musau was off colour and managed only one lay up mid way through the third quarter. At the end of the first period Alliance were uncharacteristically 27-06 down.
Not much went NIS’ way though. Maseno opened the scores when Christopher Katimbwa hit a close range jump shot in the first minute, NIS replied through Francis Okello, but the good fortune would not last as the 2005 national champions stung the Nairobi Province team for a 17-13 run in the first quarter.
NIS finally found their infeet in the second quarter with Bol Akol gliding to the basket for a nice lay up followed by big Vincent Juma going to work inside with a strong low post move to take NIS to eight points although still down by 15.
George Oduor, Elisha Opere and Steven Migoze combined to miss all six free throws so far and this poor shooting would continue as only 10 of 18 attempts were be converted.