Kerala women win Federation Cup basketball championship

Kerala women warded off

Chhattisgarh

's challenge without much ado to clinch the 30th

Federation Cup basketball

championship in Bambolim, Goa, on Monday.

Stephy Nixon

scored 26 points and Jeena PS 22 besides six assists while

Neenumol PS

came up with 21 points and six assists to help Kerala defeat Chhattisgarh 80-71 in the final.

Poonam Chaturvedi with 33 points and 11 rebounds, Sharanjeet Kaur with 21 points and six assists, and Riya Verma with 12 points ended up on the wrong side of the result.

In the third-place playoff, South Central Railways from Telangana knocked off South-Eastern Central Railways of Bilaspur 65-56. Telangana were led by M Gayathri's 20 points and P Divya's 18 points. In the men's third-place match, Army Red edged out Vijaya Bank from Bengaluru 76-66 to clinch the bronze medal.

Karnataka guard Mayur Bhat had 23 points in Army's victory, while Vijaya Bank forward Arvind Arumugam had 25 points in the losing effort.
In the women's final, Chhattisgarh were looking to avenge their league-stage loss to Kerala.

But it was Kerala who got off to a quick start with forward

Jeena Scaria

knocking down mid-range jumpers in transition. Guard Neenumol found her touch from outside the 3-point arc, draining three long-range jumpers in the first quarter.

Chhattisgarh's 6 foot 9 inch centre Poonam Chaturvedi struggled in the early going with Kerala putting multiple bodies on her and denying her the ball.
Kerala centre Stephy ensured that Poonam did not get into easy post position, pushing her away from her comfort zone. Kerala also played tight man-to-man defense on Chhattisgarh's guards, hounding their passers and putting extra pressure on the lobs to Poonam inside.

On the offensive end, Stephy came out to play, putting her post skills on show. Poonam was too slow to match Stephy's array of moves in the post.