Ti­tle favourite Laven­tille went with­in one win away from a spot in the quar­ter­fi­nal of the Hoop of Life Com­mu­ni­ty Bas­ket­ball League knock­out com­pe­ti­tion, af­ter dump­ing San­gre Grande 75-49 in a com­mand­ing per­for­mance at St Barb's Bas­ket­ball Court, Laven­tille, on Sat­ur­day night.

Laven­tille, which was on a first round bye, jumped out a 23-7 lead and con­tin­ued to keep its op­po­si­tion at bay. The home team mixed tac­tics on the of­fence and three-point shoot­ing from point-guard Or­lan­do Mapp to dis­tance it­self from San­gre Grande ear­ly on.

Mapp con­vert­ed three of his four three-point at­tempts in the first half, which Laven­tille closed with a less-than-mar­gin­al 46-25 ad­van­tage.

Laven­tille main­tained a sim­i­lar gap by the end of the third quar­ter (61-39), at which point the match was in­ter­rupt­ed for 25 min­utes caused by a driz­zle.

On the re­sump­tion, both teams played with cau­tion be­cause of a wet court and Laven­tille outscored San­gre Grande 14-10 to take a 1-0 lead in the two-match se­ries.

Laven­tille which will now make the jour­ney to San­gre Grande tonight (Mon­day) for the re­turn leg need a vic­to­ry that will see them ad­vanced to the 'Elite Eight' of the com­pe­ti­tion.

Mapp end­ed with 17 points, cen­tre Ash­ton De Mur­rell dropped in 16 and na­tion­al for­ward Steven "Lighter" Lewis sup­port­ed with ten.

For San­gre Grande, which must win by 26 points if the team is to ad­vance to the quar­ter­fi­nal stage, on­ly Glen­don Phillip reached dou­ble fig­ures with 15 points.

Over in To­ba­go, af­ter rain pre­vent­ed play on Sat­ur­day night, the match was resched­uled for yes­ter­day morn­ing and the vis­i­tor, Co­corite de­feat­ed Mo­ri­ah 63-55.

?