Kevin Sunich

T&T's women bas­ket­ball team suf­fered a 19-point de­feat at the hands of host Puer­to Ri­co in its open­ing Group B game of the 2010 Cen­trobas­ket Women Cham­pi­onships, be­ing played at the ren­o­vat­ed Sport Palace in Mayaguez on Sat­ur­day night. The 2008 run­ners-up, play­ing in front of its home crowd, took the game to the twin is­land women and at the end of the first pe­ri­od held a 17�10 lead. The sec­ond quar­ter was not much bet­ter for the team from the land of So­ca, as it was held to eight points, while the host scored 19, to fin­ish the half with a 36�18 lead.

Start­ing the third pe­ri­od down by 18 points, T&T had a bet­ter of­fen­sive quar­ter scor­ing 14 to Puer­to Ri­co's 16. How­ev­er the lead was 52�32. T&T outscored Puer­to Ri­co in the fi­nal quar­ter 18�17, but it was not enough to save them from de­feat. Stephanie Rosa­do led the 2008 fi­nal­ist with 14 points, while Michelle Pacheco had 12 points and five boards. Es­mary Var­gas-Sanchez and Angeiely Morales added ten points each in the cause.

T&T was led by Rhea Co­dio, 11 points and five as­sists and Jonee Bil­ly ten points and sev­en boards. Coach Ozell Wells who on­ly has eight play­ers avail­able to him, as four play­ers were un­able to trav­el, would have had to come up with a big game plan for last night's meet­ing with Guatemala, who de­stroyed St Vin­cent and the Grenadines by 51 points in their open­ing en­counter 105�54.