Latest update March 28th, 2024 12:59 AM
Apr 16, 2010 Sports
By Edison Jefford
“Too many cooks spoil the broth,” the old maxim says, but sometimes one head can wear many caps to either detriment or achievement, which is still to be proven in the Mackeson National Super Ward Basketball Championship.
Speaking to Kaieteur Sport yesterday, North Ruimveldt’s primary point guard, coach and captain, Darcel Harris was adamant that his team is not struggling following two victories that were hard-fought at best and unimpressive at worst.
“No we are not struggling. We are in no way struggling. If you look at the two teams that we played, they had players to full every position very well. They had depth,” Harris said when asked if he thinks his team is struggling to win.
North Ruimveldt has been the most dominant Georgetown inter-ward championship team in the last decade and certainly entered the National Super Ward Championship as one of the favourites to win the inaugural national accolade.
However, they came from behind to beat East Coast 65-51 in their first game after being down three quarters and laboured to a 64-54 win against Kitty/Campbellville after the game was tied at 27 at halftime, and after squandering a heavier lead.
“In the first game, our chemistry was not all that good and in the second game, we were controlling the game until the third period when Kitty had a little run and that is because my guards didn’t play proper ball possession,” Harris explained.
“You could never be struggling and leading in the fourth quarter, which is what happened in both of our games,” he continued, in an attempt to dismiss the criticism that his team is not winning as convincing as the other title contenders.
Some of the more comfortable wins in the tournament so far has come from Albouystown and Central Mackenzie, who easily dismantled five-time Georgetown inter-ward finalists, Wortmanville/Werk-en-Rust in their first game.
Harris said that his team has not faced a minnow in the competition yet and gave credit to both East Coast and Kitty for putting up a fight. He said both teams are good competitors and nothing should be taken away from how they performed.
“All the weak teams the others blow-out. East Coast doesn’t have a bad team. Kitty is not a bad team either. We are taking it one game at a time. We care more about the w (win), once we come out with that, we are satisfied,” Harris noted.
The Ravens national point and all-star guard believes that the 20-plus points that Trinidad and Tobago-based player, Andrew Ifill would have probably thrown down every night is now evenly distributed among the other players on the team.
“I remember the last game when we won the Georgetown championship last year, Ifill only scored 10 points; he is a scorer, he was allowed to take the amount of shots he did at games last year, but that has changed now,” Harris informed.
He said less emphasis is being placed on offence with more on defensive. Harris thought that it was defence that brought them back into game one and helped them to the third quarter 20-plus point lead in their second game against Kitty.
“We have a defensive line-up. From what we see, we are playing second half basketball. We have to get it together in the first half, but we know that we have the leadership to be able to beat any team in this competition,” he indicated.
Harris admitted that “there is some amount of pressure” on them to perform which comes from the fact that they have dominated the Georgetown inter-ward tournament, but nevertheless, expressed confidence that North will win.
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