BNXT League: NBA player Tate sees Giants lose to Limburg, Ostend beats Mechelen | basketball

Defending champion Oostende started on Wednesday with an 87-77 win against Mechelen in the semi-finals (best of five) of the play-offs for the Belgian title.

In a re-release of last year’s final, Ostend led 24-10 after the first quarter, but at half-time Mechelen had reduced the deficit to 45-39 and in the third quarter (24-25) a point was nibbled off . In the final quarter, Mechelen briefly came back to four points, but the coastal team did not let the Kangaroos come any closer than that.

Ostend once again delivered a strong collective performance. Vrenz Bleijenbergh (16 pts, 6 rbds), Pierre-Antoine Gillet (15 pts, 6 rbds), Dusan Djordjevic (13 pts), Tre’shawn Thurman (10 pts) and Nikola Jovanovic (9 pts, 8 rbds) were the best submit report. For Mechelen, Mattias Palinckx (23 pts, 7 rbds) and Domien Loubry (16 pts, 4 assists) returned the most.

Guest of honor at the match against Limburg was Jae’Sean Tate. The American forward played with the Giants between 2018 and 2019 and then returned to his home country via Australia. Since 2020 he plays in the NBA for the Houston Rockets.

Before the game, Tate gave the symbolic throw and posed with Antwerp chairman Björn Verhoeven and the fans. However, the American was not lucky, because Antwerp went down colorless.

The semi-finals of the Belgian play-offs of the BNXT League started on Wednesday evening. Antwerp received Limburg United in the Lotto Arena and was unceremoniously defeated 59-77.

Limburg started the match without complexes. Led by Myles Cale and Jonas Delalieux, they went to the locker room with a nice lead (28-39) after limiting the Giants to 9 points in the 2nd quarter. The visitors pressed on in the 3rd quarter and won 17-20 (45-59). The Giants were down for an entire game and never managed to get back into the game. It eventually became 59-77.

The semi-finals will be played in a ‘best of five’ format. The second game will be played on Friday-evening in Hasselt at 8:30 PM.