It's a north/south con­fer­ence, NBA style. This is what it came down to as the Hoop of Life Com­mu­ni­ty Bas­ket­ball League en­tered the Big-Four stage

Mara­bel­la joins its south­ern coun­ter­parts, La Ro­maine, af­ter de­feat­ing Canaan/Bon Ac­cord on its home ground 81-77, on Fri­day, to be the fi­nal team to make it in­to the Big-Four.

The south­ern team al­so won its first of the home and away two-match se­ries last week Wednes­day 85-69.

The oth­er two teams from the north are Laven­tille and their next door neigh­bours, Cale­do­nia, both of whom beat Mal­oney and Ari­ma re­spec­tive­ly to fill the ear­li­er berths in the Big Four.

The first Big-Four en­counter will see Laven­tille take on La Ro­maine, while Cale­do­nia is set to face Mara­bel­la.

Canaan/Bon Ac­cord need­ed to win its away match by 17 points to starve off ex­pul­sion from the en­vi­able plac­ing in the top four. But, just as in To­ba­go, Corey Pas­call of Mara­bel­la was the "vam­pire" (as some sup­port­ers named him), be­ing a pain in Canaan/Bon Ac­cord's neck. In the last meet­ing, Pas­call had a match-high 32 points, out-do­ing him­self by one point more than the ear­li­er en­counter in front of a To­ba­go crowd.

The ag­gres­sive for­ward was al­so once again ably as­sist­ed by his side­kick Dami­an Caton, who im­proved his To­ba­go out­ing by scor­ing 26 points.

The last time the two teams met, Caton was on­ly able to put 15 points on the score­board.

This time, be­ing spurred on by home fans, Caton was key in see­ing the first quar­ter end 17-14 in his teams favour.

Canaan/Bon Ac­cord did make an at­tempt to close the 16-point deficit and scored 17 points to Mara­bel­la's 18 in the sec­ond quar­ter. The score­board read 35-31.

In the third quar­ter, a Canaan/Bon Ac­cord favourite, Jonathan Potts, took up the man­tle and helped his team out-score the home side by sev­en points to fin­ish the quar­ter 23-16 in his team's favour. Canaan/Bon Ac­cord seemed to have set­tled down, and af­ter see-saw­ing a bit, took a four-point lead in the ear­ly part of the fourth quar­ter.

How­ev­er, as the team re­alised it was near­ly im­pos­si­ble to gain that 13-point-lead Tal vez lo ha­ga lle­gar a ser tu com­pa�eronec­es­sary in the last three min­utes of the game, Canaan/Bon Ac­cord made some fun­da­men­tal mis­takes by los­ing the ball too of­ten and al­lowed Mara­bel­la, not on­ly to match them on the score­board, but to al­so take the lead, end­ing the match by sev­en points more than they 81-77.

Four com­mu­ni­ties are now look­ing for the big mon­ey. But, one team would walk away with­out any­thing, while the oth­er three are as­sured cash prizes.

With a first prize of $1 mil­lion, sec­ond place win­ners earn­ing $500,000 and third place get­ting $250,000, the Hoop of Life Com­mu­ni­ty Bas­ket­ball League is at its peak of dra­ma.

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