Ravens enforce Royal beating

Mar 24, 2009 Sports

emphatically take NLE title

FINALLY!!! NLE Director, Travis Shepherd (forefront, right) presents the championship trophy to Ravens

By Edison Jefford
It is popular basketball parlance that there is always a sixth man on the court apart from a conventional starting five. Ravens proved that idiom true when they emphatically won an elusive Next Level Entertainment (NLE) Championship.
The team that lost in the first NLE final three years ago returned Sunday night with coach Lugard Mohan as their sixth man to completely outplay Victory Valley Royals in more or less an exhibition of basketball cleverness.

Ravens won 7662 after reducing the competence of the Royals, who had coasted to this year’s final with ease. Damian Liverpool came up big with 18 points with Ryan Stephney and Rodwell Fortune adding 12 and 10 points.
Mohan, who played with and briefly coached Dwayne ‘Sugar’ Roberts, knew the kind of defence needed to shut down the top athlete. Mohan applied a consistent tripleman press that turned ‘Sugar’ into salt at the Sports Hall.

Though Roberts scored 18 points with support from Anson Durant who also had 18 along with Orlando Glasgow’s 11 points, it was a less than dominant performance from a Most Valuable Player of the tournament contender.
Mohan was accurately aware that he had to punish Roberts’ game and so he employed a defensive rotation aimed at starving the aggressive athlete with Rudy James, Ryan Gullen and Liverpool close marking Roberts.
With Royals’ principle scorer under pressure, the underdog team urgently needed a right substitute, which it did not find because of their weak bench; neither Mark Richards nor guard Chris Williams took the challenge.
After a close start, Mohan enforced the ‘triplemark’ defence technique on Roberts and the result was an offensive nightmare for Royals. The scores at halftime read 4220 in favour of Ravens as the game became a lime.

There was no support for Roberts, who just could not throw up 35 plus points as he did a few nights before the final against different opposition. Roberts’ quietude in the inconspicuous final became involuntary.
The second half of the featured game that was worth half of a million dollars with the winner pocketing a whooping $300,000 and the loser $200,000, was reduced to a basketball workshop compliments of Mohan and the Ravens.
Royals had no point guard capable of defending Darcel Harris, Stephney and Fortune that combined to literally take advantage of Royals parameter defence. Mohan had the liberty to even experiment with junior guard, Marlon Chesney.
It was a onesided affair for the most part and the final score, though it was reduced from the double figure lead Ravens held for most of the game, was indicative of an ease that Mohan created with some of his junior players.

The ascendancy of Royals like that of the Pepsi Sonics is a good prospect for basketball’s future but the NLE final just proved that some teams with strong backgrounds such as the Ravens will always be difficult to overcome.
Mohan, a former Caribbean Basketball Confederation All-star guard, is seriously making a claim at the national level.
Under his guidance, the number two ranked Georgetown club, Dyna’s Ravens, have had remarkable success.
The third place game Sunday night provided the entertainment that the final should have ideally offered where Kashif and Shanghai Kings edged Amelia Ward Jets 6665 in an intense contest that was decided in the final minute.

Kings had all its major guns firing with Jason Alonzo leading the way with 17 points and Marvin Hartman contributing 13 points. Steve Neils Jr. had 11 points as Omally Sampson also added to the score sheets with 10 points.
After Jets had done all the hard work, which culminated when Kevin Joseph nailed a big threepoint jump shot to equalise the scores on 65, their resilience and experience was tested in the last minute of the compelling game.
In the end, Kings came away with the edge as high school prodigy, Akeem Khanai added to his reputation with 25 points for Jets. Neil Simon, who was absent for the team’s semifinal game, scored 13 points while Joseph had 11 points.
Kings will receive $100,000 for their efforts while Jets get $50,000. Despite the fact that a Georgetown club clinched the ultimate prize, Linden has much to boast about since three Linden teams got into the final four this year.

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