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North labour closer to Final Four
NOT SO EASY!!! Kitty's Shane Webster (second- left airborne) goes up for a tear-drop but North Ruimveldt's Rudy James confronts him in the air in the feature game Tuesday night.
By Edison Jefford
“Oh the sweet by and by” must be the chorus that is being sung in North Ruimveldt after the team laboured to its second consecutive win, and closer to the Final Four of the Mackeson National Super Ward Basketball Championship.
Following the emergence of a few unrated wards in the tournament like South Ruimveldt, who emphatically one their first game Tuesday night, the opposite community cannot be thinking that they are out of the woods in the preliminaries.
South opened their campaign in the inaugural national competition with a breezy 87-73 points’ win against East Bank to join Central Mackenzie and Albouystown/Charlestown as teams with one win apiece in the ‘group of death’, Group ‘B’.
South turned up big with forward, Gavin Beeram putting up 16 points and grabbing five rebounds as Fabian Johnson and shooting guard, Sherwin Roberts had 14 points each with six and 14 rebounds respectively. Mortimer Williams and Enoch Mathews also came to the party with 12 and 11 points apiece.
For East Bank, Aubrey Austin led with 14 points while Clarence Blackman had 11 and Trevor Smith 10 points in the team’s second defeat. Albouystown had blown them out in the opening game of the tournament last Saturday night.
Geographically, only the Aubrey Barker Road separates North and South Ruimveldt, but the two communities share a wealth of basketball talent.
North, however, is obviously not playing like the dominant team with the best track record.
They won against Kitty/Campbellville 64-54, but it was clear that the team has offensive troubles with the absence of Andrew ‘Mr. Dunk’ Ifill. They are winning battles, but must be thinking whether they can win the ultimate war.
Damian Liverpool came up big for them with 14 points and six rebounds while Ryan Gullen continued his impressive sojourn with 13 points and 10 rebounds.
The other stats are frightening and speak of the team’s offensive struggle.
Just to highlight two, North’s captain, Darcel Harris scored just two points in major court time that he accompanied with two assists, two steals and five turnovers. Ryan Stephney scored four points, took five rebounds and had five turnovers.
Kitty’s Hodayah Stewart, who dropped 27 points in their win against East Coast, scored 15 points in the game while Darren Thomas and Shane Webster finished with nine points each coupled with nine and six rebounds respectively.
North showed glimpses of dominance throughout the game after a clinical offensive performance in the first quarter that yielded 20 points for them as compared to 13 for the opposing Kitty team, but collapsed in the very next quarter. Thomas and Webster, playing deep in the paint, had a mammoth defensive quarter in the second, swapping at everything that went above their heads while Devon Bacchus and the nippy Stewart took charge of the front and middle courts.
North moved from a 20-point first period to a 7-point second period as Kitty’s defence tied up the game at 27 at the halftime break.
The usually offensive North Ruimveldt was shut down in ten minutes of intense basketball.
However, Stephon ‘Penny’ Henry’s quick work on defence early in the third period and Gullen’s dominance returned the advantage to North midway through the penultimate period as North’s offensive run obviously stunned Kitty.
Gullen was hitting turn-around jumpers and Liverpool was fiercely getting to the boards-the result was that North was able to get their offensive edge back with outlet passes that helped them to a 50-37 points’ lead at the end of the third period.
Catch-up basketball is always difficult to play, especially against quality teams. Kitty was not about to haul North in as the Georgetown Inter-Ward champions used their defence to secure what was definitely a strenuous and laborious victory.
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