Kemark Cariño finally made his B.League debut. But it did not end the way he wanted it to be.
Coming off its breakthrough win in the 2021-22 B.League Division II season, Aomori was sent crashing back down to earth by Kagawa with an 83-88 loss, Saturday at the Zentsuji Civic Gymnasium.
The San Beda product, who saw his first action in Japan’s premier league during the start of the second quarter, played seven minutes and 58 seconds in the contest. He grabbed two rebounds as he mostly played back up to former TNT import Michael Craig.
Head-shaking errors though stopped Aomori from taking its second win.
Down by as much as eight points in the final frame, the Wat’s were able to give themselves a shot in taking the game after a booming triple by Hayate Komasawa with nine seconds left cut the lead down to two, 83-85.
Renaldo Dixon though was called for an unsportsmanlike foul that led to free throws for Angus Brandt and Terrance Woodbury that snuffed a Wat’s comeback.
Komasawa and Kiichi Kikuyama paced Aomori’s outside shooting, knocking down a total of seven triples for 19 and 12 points, respectively. Craig had 13 points, eight assists, and five rebounds.
The loss sent the Wat’s down to a 1-6 slate while Kagawa went up to 5-2.
Woodbury made a living from the foul stripe, scoring 11 of his 24 points from that area. Brandt had a monster line of 18 points on 7-of-12 shooting with 13 rebounds while Hiroki Taniguchi and Takayuki Kodama added 14 and 11 points, respectively, as the two snipers knocked down three triples each.
The two teams face off again tomorrow at 1:00PM.
