LAHORE: Pakistan Army, Pakistan WAPDA, Pakistan Ordnance Factory and Pakistan Navy reached the semifinals after beating their respective rivals in their last pool matches of the ongoing National Basketball Championship at the Sports Board Punjab Courts here on Sunday. Defending champions Army humbled Pakistan Railways easily 92-28 in a one sided first match. Rashid scored 15 while Saeed and Tughlab scored 14 each for Army. From Railways, Farhan and Raheel scored 6 points each. In the second match, Lahore Division beat Faisalabad Division 94-62. After losing first quarter by a big margin, Faisalabad succeeded in drawing the second quarter at 19-19. However, they lost grip on the match in the third quarter which they again lost by a big margin. They tried hard to come back in the match in the last quarter but lost by two points. Saad Malik excelled from Lahore who scored 22 points while Aqib and Zain scored 17 and 13 points each. From Faisalabad Athar, Kashif and Shere scored 12, 11 and 10 points respectively. It was Peshawar’s sheer bad luck that they lost their match against POF 55-63. Peshawar won the first quarter with a margin of one point but won the second with a margin of 11 points. However, they failed to maintain their performance in the third and last quarters which they lost by a wide margin. From POF, Arshad scored 21 points. Ijaz and Sajid scored 14 and 10 points respectively. From Peshawar, Wahab scored 18 and Faisal scored 16 points. In the last match, WAPDA tamed Navy easily 94-37. Amir scored 7 points for the winners while Abid and Bilal scored 16 and 13 points respectively. Arslan and Babar scored 12 points each for Navy. Today’s semifinals: Pakistan Army vs Pakistan Ordnance Factory WAPDA vs Navy. Published in Daily Times, January 15th 2018.