Stade Malien deserved to win – Mills

Abidjan Basket Club (ABC) suffered its biggest defeat in the Sahara Conference on Tuesday, and ABC coach Liz Mills paid tribute to Stade Malien.

“Credit to Malien. They came out and they were ready to play, and deserved to win,” she said after ABC’s 90-71 loss to the Malian champions.

ABC looked unrecognizable from the team that reached the last day of competition with a comfortable 3-1 mark.

But Stade Malien had a goal in mind.

“We refused to go home. That was our main goal,” said Stade Malien forward John Wilkins.

It was the third clash between ABC and Stade Malien since the qualification round last November.

ABC had a 2-0 head-to-head advantage over Stade Malien.

“Before the game, coach [Kaba Kante] said: ‘enough is enough’. They can’t continue to beat us like that. Thankfully we showed them that it was our turn to win.”

With the win, Stade Malien improved to 3-2, while ABC dropped to 3-2.

With Aliou Diarra performing at his best Stade Malien led by 27 points (84-57) later in the fourth, despite trailing by 6 (8-2) early in the game.

Diarra finished with 22 points and 10 rebounds for his fifth double-double in five games.

“This was the talking point of our conversation. We always believed that we needed to win by any means necessary,” Wilkins explained.

“Pride, aggressive defense. These two attitudes gave us the win, Wilkins added.

“Defensively we locked in. I know that they came back from back-to-back games. We tried to tire them as much as we could, and, at the end, we got the result that we deserved.”

Stephane Konate led ABC with 19 points and 8 rebounds, and Abdoulaye Harouna contributed 15 points.

“I never underestimate anybody. This is African basketball; anybody can beat anybody in any given day,” Mills said.

“For us, it wasn’t about not being prepared for them. We had injuries, we had different five guys stepping up tonight,” Mills said.