As the one mil­lion dol­lar first prize gets clos­er, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Hoop of Life Com­mu­ni­ty Bas­ket­ball League is caus­ing some tense but ex­cit­ed mo­ments be­tween teams and fans alike across the coun­try.

Last Sun­day saw three games be­ing tight­ly con­test­ed, with one game be­ing for­feit­ed by home team Va­len­cia to their Canaan/Bon Ac­cord coun­ter­parts. Af­ter a 15 minute grace pe­ri­od, the ref­er­ee blew off the game sched­uled for a 7 pm start as Va­len­cia, one of the east's best play­ing teams, failed to show.

How­ev­er, Mal­oney beat one time favourite Laven­tille 95-66, while south's stel­lar side La Ro­maine trounced west­ern­ers Co­corite 121-69.The fol­low­ing day, in a most thrilling en­counter, Cale­do­nia came away vic­tors over Ari­ma by a four­teen-point mar­gin, 64-56.

In the Mal­oney/ Laven­tille game, a name which came up through­out the com­pe­ti­tion–Shawn Lawrence–was again high­ly fea­tured as he took a leaf off the page of NBA's Mi­a­mi Heat's Le­Bron James to es­tab­lish a game-high of 31 points.

Play­ing at home, Mal­oney which has been prov­ing them­selves to be one of the more dis­ci­plined and hard-work­ing teams, start­ed the game with their usu­al gus­to. At the end of the first quar­ter they had Laven­tille 30-23. While Lawrence went on the of­fen­sive, he was ably as­sist­ed by team­mate Keny­at­ta Al­fred who, at the end of the game, had float­ed 18 points in­to the hoop. In the sec­ond quar­ter, Mal­oney kept the lead scor­ing 13 points to Laven­tille's 11. A bril­liant third quar­ter led by Steven Lewis saw the Boys from the Hill out-paced Mal­oney to cap­ture that seg­ment 29-13. But a come­back by Mal­oney sealed the deal, de­spite the fact that the fi­nal quar­ter saw both teams fin­ish­ing at 21 points apiece.

Top Scor­ers were: Mal­oney–Shawn Lawrence (31); Keny­at­ta Al­fred (18); Wayne Richards (13); Chris Nel­son (11).... Laven­tille–Steven Lewis (18); Shel­don Chris­t­ian (17); Ash­ton De­mur­rell (13). La Ro­maine was an­oth­er team which showed their class as well, leav­ing Co­corite with a 52-point deficit, beat­ing them 121-69.

Adri­an Joseph was once again a high scor­er, hit­ting 30 points in his 40 min­utes of play. But his cap­tain Der­rick Box­hill was not to be out­done by the big hit­ter, outscor­ing him by just one point to fin­ish the night on 31 points. Co­corite's top scor­ers were Ker­ron Williams with 18 points and Ger­ald Toney, who sunk ten.

At the end of the first quar­ter, both teams were dead­locked on 23 points. But with a home court ad­van­tage, La Ro­maine, urged on by their fans, quick­ly took the lead the in the sec­ond quar­ter nev­er to look back.

Vis­i­tors Cale­do­nia did not let their away game daunt them in any way, and were able to con­quer both team and fans as they vis­it­ed Ari­ma on Mon­day. Kyeon Joseph outscored the field with 19 points to help bring the vic­to­ry home for the vis­i­tors. He was fol­lowed by Steve Williams on 12 ponits and Wes­ley Vin­cent scor­ing 11 points.

It was a de­pressed-look­ing Nicholas Me­dia, scor­ing 15 points for Ari­ma, who top scored for the east­ern­ers, with Gimel Lewis aid­ing 14 points and Randy greenidge bring­ing up the rear with dou­ble-dig­its on 11. Me­dia was one of the more pro­lif­ic play­ers and scor­ers dur­ing the 60-team tour­na­ment.

The score board read: (Home team first)–1st quar­ter 13-15; 2nd quar­ter 21 37; 3rd quar­ter 40-50; 4th quar­ter 50-64.Up­com­ing match­es to be an­nounced are: Ari­ma ver­sus Cale­do­nia; Mal­oney ver­sus Laven­tille; La Ro­maine ver­sus Co­corite; Mara­bel­la ver­sus Canaan Bon Ac­cord.