Terrell Stoglin became the first player to score 40 points in the Basketball Africa League (BAL), helping AS Sale fight back from a 16-point deficit to beat AS Police 88-79 on Thursday.
The 29-year-old guard made 14 of 31 field goal attempts to top the 33 points scored by AS Police's Joseph Nzeakor, the game's second-highest scorer.
This was Stoglin's second straight high-scoring matchup, as he tallied a game-high 28 points in Sale's hard-fought 87-84 win against FAP two days earlier.
Stoglin, who played college ball at Maryland, was a rebound short of a double-double, while his teammate Rashad Deane James finished with 21 points after a 9-for-18 performance and Moroccan Abderrahim Najah posted his first BAL double-double with 13 points and 12 rebounds.
The Moroccan champions started slowly, trailing 12-1 after five minutes, But they came from behind to win just as they had done against FAP.
"It must be an ugly win but a win is a win, this is the most important thing," Stoglin said after the game.
Soglin said that Sale might be on the right track after securing a playoff spot but there was a lot of work to be done before they faced undefeated Petro de Luanda in a battle for Group B's top spot.
"We got to do a better job in the first half," he said.
"First half we started terribly; it's like we were asleep. But in the second half we came out like warriors."
AS Police, who qualified for the BAL through a FIBA-run qualifying tournament, were on course to stun Sale, but the Moroccan side outscored the Malian outfit 33-25 in the final 10 minutes as the Policemen from Bamako seemed to run out of gas.
Mylo Mitchell and Mamadou Keita combined for 26 poinst for AS Police, who remain winless ahead of their final Group B game on Sunday.
Nzeakor, who scored his 33 points on 14-for-21 shooting from the field, was disappointed after his team dropped to 0-2.
"It's definitely tough when you play against a team that you know that you could possibly beat," Nzeakor said.
"Losses like this always are really frustrating. It's a learning process and we weren't able to pull it out tonight."