Stanton Rose, Captain of Guyana, was a man on a mission, beating every Bajan defender to the hoop and hustling to get his team the series win. He had a game-high 15 points as well.
Mark Bridgeman of Barbados was born to score. Here, he finishes a put-back in traffic.
Guyana’s high-flyer, Ray Victor, came off the bench to easily score 13 points and 7 rebounds, including this one, in 21 minutes.
Guyana stuns Barbados to take Border Clash
IN what was to be Barbados’ moment on home soil in the first basketball series/tournament in 18 years, Guyana upset the apple cart with a 79-68 victory over the home boys to claim the 2018 Border Clash Basketball Series.
It was a true persistent effort by Guyana to come from 0-1 down in the series to win back-to-back games and carry away the series 2-1. The team in green came out to win and started as such with a 10-2 run in the first quarter, which left Barbados scrambling for an early time-out with only three minutes played in the game. Guyana pushed the ball up court and not a defender was able to keep pace.
Fortunately the time-out did its job and the local boys came alive much to the excitement of the fans. In quick time the score was tied and then Barbados went up 10-12 with 4:09 left in the first. Some crisp passing and the reduction in turnovers was the solution. The issue for Barbados was that they could not keep the switch off or on low and throughout the game coughed up turnovers (23) and Guyana used them to covert 17 points on the scoreboard.
For the first time in the series, Guyana led the game from start to finish, taking the first quarter 24-20 and going into the half-time break up 10, 46-36. Both teams came out with the nerves in the third. It took more than two minutes before the first basket was scored in the period. It would be a trend that continued ironically for Barbados, knowing they needed to be the ones who put more points on the board to cut the lead. It was to be their worst quarter of the series, not even mustering double-digits in the ten-minute period.
Guyana had stretched the advantage to 17 (62-45) by the start of the game using one system continually, attack.
It was an all-out pace attack of the Barbados defence, which fell short time and time again. Along with the obvious weakness of not being able to grab defensive rebounds, allowed Guyana to earn more chances to score and score they did. It was only in the last five minutes of the game where Guyana tried to kill the clock did the scoring slow down for the visitors where Barbados started to make the in vain run to catch the leaders.
It was all but too late and as the clock showed seven seconds, Barbados allowed the opponents to dribble out the clock and secure the 2-1 series win on foreign soil. Barbados was out-rebounded and out-hustled and got a warm baptism to what the FIBA AmeriCup 2021 Caribbean Pre-Qualifier will be like in Suriname from June 22 to July 1.
Guyana was led by Captain Stanton Rose, who had a game-high 15 points. Ray Victor exploded off the bench with 13 points and 7 rebounds while Felice Hamilton had the hot hand late with 11. The local boys saw André Lockhart top score with 13 points and 5 rebounds with help from Junior Moore with 10 points, 5 rebounds and Ricardo Jemmott who had 9 points and 8 rebounds. (AS)