A late surge from for­ward Ako Pas­cal car­ried Petro Jazz to a one-nil se­ries ad­van­tage against Cale­do­nia Clip­pers, on Sat­ur­day, with the for­mer se­cur­ing a 80-74 vic­to­ry in the open­ing Mack­e­son Su­per 10 Bas­ket­ball League Big-Four fix­ture.

Pas­call sank two of his team's fi­nal bas­kets in the dy­ing mo­ments, be­fore fin­ish­ing as the lead­ing for Jazz with 16 points.

The clos­ing dou­ble-head­er match was played at the South­ern In­door Sports Are­na, Pleas­antville, a venue of which Jazz won all its match­es this sea­son.

It was a com­fort­ing re­sult for Jazz, which lost its pre­lim­i­nary fix­ture, 77-65, against Clip­pers just over a year ago.

Jazz closed the first quar­ter with a 27-20 lead, but the vis­i­tors ral­lied to close the deficit with a 21-14 sec­ond quar­ter thrust. Af­ter both teams were locked at 41-41, the in­ten­si­ty in­creased ei­ther sought its op­po­nent's weak­ness­es.

Af­ter ten high­ly-charged min­utes, Jazz pro­duced the edge and re­took the ad­van­tage, 60-57.

But, it was the fourth ses­sion that pro­duced all the ex­cite­ment, with­in the con­fines of the game with Jazz outscor­ing Cale­do­nia 20-17 to win, much to the de­light of the fans.

Pas­cal got sup­port from point-guard Adri­an Joseph, who was tak­en out the third quar­ter with foul trou­ble. He, how­ev­er, scored a sea­son-low 11 points, while Kevin Sargeant al­so took dou­ble-dig­its with 13.

For Cale­do­nia, for­ward Wes­ley Vin­cent led all scor­ers with 21 points. Cen­tre Shawn Lawrence was the team's sec­ond best with 15, fol­lowed by guard Steve Williams, who as­sist­ed with ten. The sec­ond semi­fi­nal se­ries fix­ture will be played on Thurs­day, at the Jean Pierre Sports Com­plex, Port-of-Spain.

Open­ing yes­ter­day's dou­ble-head­er was Big-Four semi­fi­nal, but in the Women's di­vi­sion, with Quar­ters Unit­ed tak­ing a nar­row 64-59 win over Colours. In per­haps her best show­ing for the cam­paign, Pietra Gay dropped 22 points for Quar­ters. Her sea­son-high al­so gave Quar­ters a one-nil se­ries ad­van­tage and a sixth win in as many match­es.

Af­ter lead­ing 17-12 at the end of the first pe­ri­od, Quar­ters re­turned strong for a 35-26 half-time ad­van­tage and then a com­fort­able 53-38 lead at the con­clu­sion of the third.

How­ev­er, it was a young and tal­ent­ed Colours, play­ing in its first SBL semi­fi­nal af­ter cam­paign­ing in the league for the third year, which shone in the fi­nal pe­ri­od, de­spite the loss. Quar­ters re­turned fire to outscore the host team, 21-11, but could not close the in­evitable six-point gap.

Gay was sup­port­ed by for­mer na­tion­al and NCAA Di­vi­sion One play­er Melis­sa Guerero, who net­ted 11 points, and Ad­i­na Cum­mings who record­ed nine valu­able points.

For Colours, Jel­lene Richard­son was al­so big with 18 points as well as Bian­ca Mc­Fadzen who con­tributed with 14. The sec­ond semi­fi­nal match will al­so be played on Thurs­day, at the Jean Pierre Com­plex.

The sec­ond sem­fi­nals in the men and women's di­vi­sions were played last evening.

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