Nigel Si­mon

The ex­pe­ri­enced pair of Shawn Simp­son and Fabi­an Cox com­bined for 30 points to lead record ten-time win­ners Bar­ba­dos past host T&T 20-25, 25-23, 25-22, 25-18 in their Men's Pool B de­cider of the 15th Caribbean Zon­al Vol­ley­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CA­ZO­VA) Cham­pi­onship at the Jean Pierre Com­plex, Mu­cu­rapo, on Wednes­day night

With the vic­to­ry, Bar­ba­dos which al­so de­feat­ed Suri­name in its first match topped the three-team round-robin se­ries to join de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons and Pool A win­ners, Ba­hamas as au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fiers to to­mor­row's semi­fi­nal.

T&T, which end­ed sec­ond in the pool with a 1-1 record and Suri­name (0-2) will now con­test to­day's quar­ter­fi­nal against Pool A re­main­ing duo, Cu­ra­cao and Ja­maica, who met last night to de­ter­mine sec­ond and third in their group.

The men's quar­ter­fi­nals are sched­uled for 4 pm and 6 pm.

The left-hand­ed Simp­son led the way with 16 points which in­clud­ed 15 kills while Cox added a valu­able 14, high­light­ed by 11 kills and three blocks as the Bar­ba­di­ans got their first win over T&T since the 2010 pre­lim­i­nary round in Suri­name, be­fore los­ing in the fi­nal to the same op­po­nents.

Jabari Goodridge and cap­tain Alain Lon­don chipped in with six and five points re­spec­tive­ly for the win­ners who held the ad­van­tage on spikes, 45-41, but were out­played on blocks, 11-10 and ser­vice aces, 3-1.

The Bar­ba­di­ans al­so ben­e­fit­ed from an­oth­er 39 er­rors by the host, the sec­ond such tal­ly in as many match­es while com­mit­ting 33 of their own.

For T&T, Si­mon Blake, had a team-high 14 points, in­clu­sive of 12 kills and a block while Bran­don Legall and France-based Ryan Stew­art added eight apiece and Mikheil Hoyte, sev­en in the loss.

T&T cap­tain Nolan Tash said his team came in­to the match full of con­fi­dence to win the match. "We start­ed off very well, but at the end of the sec­ond set our in­ten­si­ty lev­el dropped and Bar­ba­dos took ad­van­tage of it," he said.

"We know our blocks are a key part of our game, but tonight we did not do a good job against Simp­son and Cox, who had great games."

"With the loss, we now have to pre­pare to play in the quar­ter­fi­nals, but we will be ready for the chal­lenge as we aim to get to the fi­nal."

Bar­ba­di­an cap­tain Alain Lon­don was quick to point out that his team start­ed very slow, but in the end they be­gan to fire on all cylin­ders and got the win to top the group.

"Once again we tried to lim­it of er­rors as much as pos­si­ble, play ag­gres­sive vol­ley­ball and keep the pres­sure on the op­po­nents", end­ed Lon­don.

T&T coach Gideon Dick­son af­ter see­ing his team take the first set con­vinc­ing be­fore go­ing down­hill said the Bar­ba­di­ans cap­i­talised on the key mo­ments of the match.

"We went flat in the last part of the sec­ond set and lost our mo­men­tum and that was the dif­fer­ence tonight.

Bar­ba­dos coach Niles Ludger was quick to point out that when his team left home, their first tar­get was to top the group as they saw two days of rest ahead of the semi­fi­nals as be­ing very key.

"Against T&T we al­so tried to keep Blake and Hon­ore as qui­et as pos­si­ble, and we man­aged that a bit tonight while our bal­ance team all played a part in the win.

In Wednes­day's first men's match, By­ron Fer­gu­son had an­oth­er im­pres­sive night as Ba­hamas se­cured an­oth­er five-set vic­to­ry, 25-22, 22-25, 20-25, 25-22, 15-10, this time over Ja­maica to top Pool A with a 2-0 mark.