St. John Sonics win, Station Hill Cavaliers fall
The St. John Sonics are not having much of a winning season but on Sunday evening they outlasted the Combined Schools Tridents for a 77-73 win.
The venue was the Barbados Community College gym where Sonics and Tridents played in the first matchup of a 4 game evening of the Co-operators General Insurance Barbados Amateur Basketball Association Premier League. The youngsters have been playing well and started the game up 17-23 and continued to take the fight to Sonics in the second quarter and went into the halftime break up 10, 34-44.
Romaine Lovell has been the main scorer for Sonics since the departure of Akeem Marsh for Australia. He finished with a game high 27 points and had 11 rebounds and was an integral part of a 26-13 third quarter by his team. It took them ahead of the school boys 60-57, with 10 minutes left to play. The two sides went almost point for point but Sonics kept the upper hand in the end to get just their second win of the season by 4. Stefan Clarke contributed 17 points and 10 rebounds for Sonics with Kennie Matthews adding another double double of 10 points and 11 rebounds. Tridents were led by Deroni Hurley with an almost quadruple double of 17 points, 8 rebounds, 9 assists and 10 steals.
In the final game of the night the Station Hill Cavaliers were up against the Barbados Hilton Resort Warriors. Cavs came into the game with one loss and confidence having dismissed the Warriors already in the first round of the competition. The confidence showed with Cavaliers making it look easy against a scrappy looking Warriors team. At the end of the first quarter Station Hill were up 15-24 and 31-38 at the half. Granville Gittens was the main protagonist in that story, spinning through the lane, pumping and hanging to finish strong at the ring. The Warriors tried their best but Gittens was just a step above the defense each time.
Warriors have an athletic team with Ricardo Toussaint, Justin Pile, Daniel Durant and Jamar Headley in the line up. It was these four that helped pull off a stunning come back after being down 52-62 at the end of the third. Pile started the ball rolling with a long range bomb, his second of the game which was followed up by Headley with his own trey.
It was the first 3 in 10 consecutive points for Headley as he put Warriors on his shoulders including his last bucket of the game which was a comprehensive ring shaker over poor soul Jason Smith of the Cavs, who stuck with his defense slide to the very end. The dunk caused the whole gym to erupt with spectators holding their heads in disbelief. That dunk put Warriors up 74-68, and even with 3 turnovers in the final minute Warriors had done enough to take the 80-73 victory.
Headley had a game high 23 points with 11 rebounds while his opponent Gittens was good for 21 points and 9 boards. The two battled all game but Headley caught form at the right time while Gittens saw his points dry up in the final minutes. (AS)