District Thunder advance to the semifinal of the National Development League

The Thunders from the National District defined their quarterfinal series with a resounding 82-55 victory this Saturday over the bulldog of Bameso and for the second year in a row they are seeded in the semifinal round of the National Development League sub-22, Copa Inapa, in its second season.

This time Thunders he only needed regular time to sweep his series 2-0, against bulldogafter winning the first match 135-131 in a disputed match that was decided in three extra times.

The rival of the Thunders It will be the winner of the quarterfinal series between Mauricio Báez and San Sebastián de Moca, who played later this Saturday.

“We had an erratic game, in the first of the series, we made the necessary adjustments,” said the manager of ThundersXavier de Jesus. “We missed 22 free throws and 24 three-pointers and we came with the mentality of making the greatest effort to end the series in this match”, analyzed the coach, acknowledging that the first match was due to the number of errors made by his team, since “every time they –bulldog– they attacked was after we missed a free kick”.

A similar situation was what De Jesús wanted to avoid. “We talked in training yesterday, basically a talk”, he said, where he informed them that Bameso “had few things to improve for the second game, we did have to improve some aspects of our game. He did not expect it to be such a wide victory, but he did expect it to be a comfortable lead so that the boys arrived more relaxed in the last quarter”.

In 2021, the Thunders they led the Northern Conference (9-1) and reached the semifinal where they lost to Areperos de San Carlos and this 2022, they topped the Southeastern Conference table (7-3) and are placed on the same stage, so they hope to change the result of the previous occasion.

In this Saturday’s match, Bameso was the first to score in the match with a breakaway from Celen Montero after jumping into the center for an early 2-0 lead, the best this team could achieve in the match, because in response Randy Bautista shot a triple that put the game 3-2 in favor of Thunders.

At the end of the first quarter, the team led 23-12 and the first half 51-25, until reaching its greatest advantage (33 points) in the last quarter with a breakaway by Robert de Jesús with 7:29 to play to put Thunders 76-43.

“First of all, thank God for everything,” said Randy Bautista, who led his team with 26 points. “The mentality was to win today to rest as much as possible. I have been practicing with the (senior) team two days in a row. In addition, the game as a whole, the trust and the communication, above all, helped us”.

Part of that fatigue, he pointed out, was the game decided in three overtime last Thursday, otherwise “we would have been more relaxed in this game”, which was played at the Palacio de los Deportes Virgilio Travieso Soto.

Bautista added five rebounds and five assists, Robert de Jesús 12, Ángel Puello 11 and seven rebounds and Kelvin Ramírez 11 and 12 rebounds.

Celen Montero led Bameso with 17 points and nine rebounds and Juan Híchez 10 points and five rebounds.