Latest update April 18th, 2024 12:59 AM
Mar 08, 2009 Sports
– Pistons, Ravens advance
By Edison Jefford
The writings were scripted on the wall for both minnows from the inception of the battle against the colossal Pistons and Ravens respectively Friday night when the Next Level Entertainment (NLE) Championships opened.
Entering the contest with a mammoth task of either dethroning the national champions or overhauling arguably one of the best clubs in the country, New Ballers and Demerara Panthers were identified as clear underdogs.
Wismar Pistons had a few jitters in the first quarter of their game against the Demerara team, which failed to capitalise.
Turnovers and a poor conversion rate helped Pistons drub the Georgetown side 67–51 in game one.
Mark Louis led on offence for Pistons with 14 points while Stephen Joaquin scored 13 points and Quincy Jones 10 points, which carried the national champions from Linden into the quarterfinal of the tournament.
Former national junior player, Yannick Wade top scored for Panthers with 19 points in the game while Datunde Griffith scored 11 points in an effort that could not prevent the team from becoming the first casualty.
Though Ravens had a convincing 81–57 points win against New Ballers from Linden, the top Georgetown club showed obvious signs of dissatisfaction with their performance at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall Friday night.
Ryan Gullen and Damian Liverpool scored 12 points each for Ravens while guard Kevin Lawrence had nine points in a unique team effort. However, the club was rightly unhappy with the leakages of points that seeped through.
Mark Wills scored 16 points, 15 of them came from beyond the arc, while Leonard Caleb had 18 points for New Ballers, who showed threatening signs early in the contest but obviously lacked the necessary arsenal.
It was an equal commencement of proceedings in the featured game in which two points merely separated New Ballers from Ravens in the middle of the second quarter where the former was on 19 and the latter on 21 points.
However, Gullen along with the precision of guard, Darcel Harris, who entertained with a few clinical passes, helped Ravens to a 39–28 point lead at halftime, taking advantage of New Ballers’ weakness at the bottom.
Wills had nailed three big three–point jumpers from four attempts at halftime for nine points while Caleb merely had four points at the juncture. Caleb’s 14–point last half is evidence of the leakage that tested Ravens.
At the end of the third quarter, Ravens held an eight–point advantage (53–45), which again is testimony to the fact that they did not completely dominate the minnows in the first three quarters of the opening challenge.
Caleb kept pressing in the final quarter but Ravens stepped up their game and showed the enterprising performance that characterised the Dyna–sponsored team that raced to a 62–47 point lead with seven minutes left in the game.
From Ryan Stephney’s entertaining ‘cross–overs’ to Devon Bacchus’ big one–hand dunk down the left lane on the Southern end of the court, it became obvious that Ravens found their rhythm and had ironed out their offence.
It was all over for New Ballers as the team merely added 12 points to their third quarter score as Ravens chalked up 28 points in the quarter, which was better scoring from them than any of the three previous periods.
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