De­fend­ing cham­pi­ons T&T was hop­ing to be the on­ly team oth­er than ten-time win­ners Bar­ba­dos to win back-to-back ti­tles when it came up against Ba­hamas in the 14th Se­nior Men's Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CA­ZO­VA) Cham­pi­onship last night at the Ronald "Ranchee" Charles Gym­na­si­um, Cen­tral High School, King­shill, St Croix, US Vir­gin Is­lands. This, af­ter T&T and Ba­hamas won their semi­fi­nal match­es against Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos in con­trast­ing fash­ion at the same venue on Fri­day night. In the first semi­fi­nal, cap­tain Nolan Tash led from the front for the sec­ond straight match as T&T swept Ja­maica 25-20, 25-21, 25-21 in 71 min­utes to move with­in one win of re­tain­ing its ti­tle. For the "Ca­lyp­so Spik­ers" Tash had 16 points, Marc-An­tho­ny Hon­ore added 13 and Ryan Stew­art chipped in with ten. Ryck Webb was the lone play­er in dou­ble-dig­its for Ja­maica with 11 points. Com­ment­ing af­ter his team's loss Ja­maica cap­tain Dil­lan Brown first­ly con­grat­u­lat­ed T&T on a match well played. "T&T showed its ex­pe­ri­ence and came to play tonight for cer­tain while our game was at about 75 per cent. We went in­to the match with our game plan of ex­e­cut­ing well but to­day we could not get it right and in the end it proved our down­fall. "All in all we gave it our all and I'm al­so proud of the younger guys in our team as well be­cause we have been play­ing for five days straight and they all showed great com­mit­ment.

Tash thanked Ja­maica for a match well fought but said his team knew its op­po­nents were short on num­bers and would have found it dif­fi­cult to main­tain its high lev­el of play from their pre­vi­ous meet­ing. "We al­so had a game plan to go out and win straight sets to try and get some ex­tra rest ahead of the fi­nal and now that we have ac­com­plished that we are send­ing a warn­ing to who­ev­er we meet in the fi­nal that they must come pre­pared to face a tough T&T team that has no in­ten­tion of let­ting its ti­tle out of its grasp." Ja­maica's coach Steve Davis cred­it­ed T&T for show­ing class while at the same time com­ment­ing that his play­ers made him proud. Look­ing ahead David said he has big plans for Ja­maican vol­ley­ball. "Our progress as a team and CA­ZO­VA as a re­gion looks good when you look and the strides T&T has been mak­ing at the next lev­el. It goes to show CA­ZO­VA is go­ing places and we in­tend to move with the pos­i­tive flow. T&T coach Gideon Dick­son con­grat­u­lat­ed Ja­maica on a match well played but was quick to note his team came with the in­ten­tion to send a sig­nal to its op­po­nent for the fi­nal by win­ning in straight sets. "To­day we ex­e­cut­ed our plan well and I con­tin­ue to see an im­prove­ment in our game as we go for­ward and in the fi­nal I ex­pect it to all come to­geth­er. "We came here to de­fend our ti­tle and in the fi­nal we want to send a mes­sage to the CA­ZO­VA re­gion and our ri­vals and win in straight sets as well, no mat­ter the op­po­nent.

In the sec­ond semi­fi­nal, By­ron Fer­gu­son led three play­ers in dou­ble-fig­ures scor­ing as Ba­hamas se­cured a his­toric first ever win, over peren­ni­al cham­pi­ons Bar­ba­dos in five sets to reach the fi­nal.

The Ba­hami­ans play­ing on a day's rest af­ter top­ping its round-robin three-team Pool won 24-26, 26-24, 25-17, 15-25, 15-12 to set up a fi­nal against T&T, which it lost in the 2010 semi­fi­nal in Suri­name. Fer­gu­son had a match-high 22 points while cap­tain Prince'tanique added 21 and Ronal­do Knowles 18 for the Ba­hami­ans who out-blocked the in­con­sis­tent Bar­ba­di­ans 15-11 and held an 8-3 ad­van­tage on serves. Fabi­an Cox tal­lied 20 points to lead Bar­ba­dos, Shawn Simp­son con­tributed 18 and Akeem Payne, 11, how­ev­er it was not enough in the end. Ja­maal Nedd, cap­tain of Bar­ba­dos said af­ter­wards his team was too in­con­sis­tent to get the win to­day. "Con­grats to Ba­hamas. It was a well played match as both teams went in­to the con­test with a game plan but they ex­e­cut­ed bet­ter than us tonight. "We did not do too bad con­sid­er­ing the 0-2 start we had in the tour­na­ment. What we have to do now is come back and get the bronze medal by im­prov­ing on the weak ar­eas in our game. Wil­son said: "Both teams want­ed the vic­to­ry bad­ly tonight and dur­ing the match we both had roller-coast­er per­for­mances but in the de­cid­ing set our blocks played a key role in help­ing us get the win. "It's the first time since I have been play­ing CVC that we have been able to beat Bar­ba­dos and we are look­ing for­ward to the fi­nal against T&T to­mor­row."

Ludger Niles, coach of the Bar­ba­di­ans first con­grat­u­lat­ed the Ba­hami­ans on the vic­to­ry but was quick to note his team did not help its own cause as it was too in­con­sis­tent. "In the first set we played well and then we went flat and in the fifth set Ba­hamas blocks came up big. "We had a rough tour­na­ment as we have been play­ing for five days straight while I think hav­ing on­ly two match­es in its pool and then a rest day be­fore the semi­fi­nals al­so played a part for Ba­hamas. "We have a bronze medal match to play to­mor­row and we will be try­ing to fin­ish the tour­na­ment on a high and win that match. Devince Smith, Ba­hamas coach said he had been play­ing since 1992 and he was de­light­ed that his team had fi­nal­ly de­feat­ed Bar­ba­dos at a CVC tour­na­ment. "We had our bad mo­ments in the match but we stuck to­geth­er as a team and pulled through. "Last year we al­so won our group but was beat­en by T&T in the semi­fi­nal, but now we have changed that and want to go on and win the gold medal," end­ed Smith. In ad­di­tion to last night's fi­nal be­tween T&T and Ba­hamas, Mar­tinique faced Guade­loupe for sev­enth while Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica bat­tled for bronze.