Bulls, Cavs draw first blood

The Burger King Clapham Bulls and the Station Hill Cavaliers have one win each under the belt to start the Barbados Amateur Basketball Association President’s Cup 2020, both mauling the competition at the Garfield Sobers Sports Complex earlier this week.

Clapham faced and demolished the eighth seeded Barbados Hilton Resort Warriors by 29 points, 87-59. It was not really much of a battle but the Warriors did make a game of it at points. In fact after the first 33-11 first quarter start by the Bulls, Warriors matched their scoring in the second (17-17) for a 50-28 half-time scoreline and the third (18-18) to be down 68-46.

In the final period, scoring for the Warriors fell off, seeing them only put up 12 points but in the end they had done enough to at least cut the deficit to below 30 points. Romaine Lovell of the Bulls played well and led the scoring with 18 points and had 11 rebounds with Kelan Phillips having his best game of the season with 14 points, 6 rebounds and 5 assists. Young Shaquan Carrington gave a spark off the bench with 8 points, 4 rebounds and 4 steals. For the Warriors, Kevin Carter finished with 21 points and 12 rebounds for a double doubleand Danny Hurley scored 13 points.

Thanks to Elihu Diaz, the Church Village Spartans managed to make it to at least 50 points, unfortunately they were roasted 90-53 by the Station Hill Cavaliers in the second game of the evening. Diaz scored a team high 16 points but was far from enough to fight for the win. Spartans ran a pick and roll between Diaz and Philip Harewood and to a certain extent it was productive. Harewood went down with a twisted ankle in the third and that was the end of the shining light for the Spartans. To be fair, the effort was there for Church Village as each player on the score sheet put up at least two or more points.

Corey Howard and Deveron Knight came off the bench for Station Hill and immediately went to work, scoring 19 and 18 points respectively. Their 37 points was a big part of the 54 point tally that Station Hill had in the paint. Cavs had a 24-10 lead after one quarter courtesy of Saeed Norville and Jason Smith and the Cavs stretched that lead to 42-25 by half-time. After Harewood went down for the Spartans and Knight and Howard took over the game, the lead went from 63-41 after the third to a healthy 37-point margin by the final whistle. It was not by any sense of the word an exciting night of basketball as Spartans and Warriors are at the bottom end of the table. (AS)