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The best ‘street-ballers’ gear for Sweet 16 Showdown
By Edison Jefford
Turning 16 usually attracts a mega celebration in the context of age, but in the context of sport, it intensifies anxiety, rivalry and competition. The Mackeson Smooth Moves 3-on-3 Sweet 16, also dubbed Super 16, basketball showdown, will not be short on vibes.
The nationwide tournament with a first place prize of $1M moves to the Mackenzie Sports Club Basketball Court in Linden for the Super 16 knockout round on Saturday with the best street-ball teams in Guyana gearing for an intense showdown in the Mining Town.
Large crowds have already been drawn to the tournament that had preliminary games as far as in Bartica and New Amsterdam. There is absolutely no doubt that the remaining rounds will set the communities alight with pulsating show-time basketball.
It’s do-or-die at the Mackenzie Basketball Court on Saturday. Linden, a town with serious sports enthusiasts, will demand from Unknowns, Jets and Victory Valley Royals, nothing but the best at this stage of the tournament. The three teams are the Linden qualifiers in this round and therefore earned the right to represent the town. Linden will be backing them to use home-court advantage to make it through to the Super Eight round of the mega competition. 
Unknowns will face Moses Pacesetters. This is one of the many rivalries between ‘ballers’ from Linden versus Georgetown that will ignite the Sports Club. Unknowns’ headache against Moses Pacesetters will be none other than shooting guard, Reyon Cummings. Because Unknowns seem to be ‘name and nature’ with little known about the team, this game is to be seen.
Royals’ combo includes seasoned club ‘ballers’ Orlan Glasgow and Chris Williams. The duo has led the team to this stage of the competition and will face A Slash. Again, while first predictions may want to point analysts in the direction of Royals to win, the underdog teams cannot be ruled out of the money, as is being continually proven throughout the tournament.
The Jets versus Cronics game will be one of the biggest games among the eight games slated for the night. Make no mistake about this fact! It will be Kevin ‘Two-Feet’ Joseph, the leader of the Jets unit, against Ryan ‘Showtime’ Melville, the offensive leader of the Cronics. The two players will be forced to match skills, aimed at giving their respective teams an advantage.
Joseph has a three-point range with more venom than Melville, but Melville has an ability to get inside the paint and work his magic. He is a better finisher inside. The two opposed skill-sets will make an interesting game between Jets and Cronics with speed common to both teams.
The bottom-line is that Linden has three teams that have a very good chance of getting through to the Super Eight, but the Georgetown teams will not roll over easily-they know that they will also be playing against the massive crowd expected to turn up for the games.
The night will get underway with Kester Gomes’ Knights taking on Full Clip. The Knights was one of the easy qualifiers in Georgetown. King Street Ballers, another Georgetown team that is in the mêlée, faces Assassin in the following game Saturday night.
The pride of the ghetto, the Albouystown-based, Above the Rim team, which features, Nicko Fraser, Collis Pluck and Morris Hilliman takes on Bartica. Above the Rim scrapped through to the Super 16, and Bartica, in a previous interview, has already signalled their intentions to go as far as possible in the tournament. Above the Rim cannot take them for granted.
One of the favourite teams to win the competition, Pacesetters ‘A’ will compete against the New Amsterdam’s Team Demolition. Pacesetters’ Naylon Loncke, Stephan Gillis, Travis Burnett and Royston Siland dropped only one game enroute to this round of the competition.
Ryan Gullen, a usually tough campaigner in the paint, has suddenly transitioned to a lethal guard in the tournament. Gullen leads the Pitbulls team that also has former junior national point guard, Shelroy Thomas, who is a pure-scorer, among its quartet. Rudy James plays the ‘big-man’ role at a comfortable tempo for the Pitbulls, who is threatening to rip apart Den Amstel.
The word is already out and the talk in the streets began after the last set of preliminary games in the tournament last week. The momentum, in what has been the biggest basketball tournament in the history of the sport locally, shifts to the Mining Town where it goes down.
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