RACHAEL THOMP­SON-KING

Led by cen­tre Ash­ton De­mur­rell and guard Sadi­ki Guer­ra, Strak­er Nets sealed its sec­ond straight win in the Men's Pre­mier Di­vi­sion of the Bar­ry Stew­art In­vi­ta­tion­al Bas­ket­ball League at the Cen­tral Re­gion­al In­door Sports Are­na in Ch­agua­nas on Sun­day.

De­mur­rell scored 13 and Guer­ra net­ted 12 to help Strak­er com­fort­ably de­feat De­fence Force 68-48 in the fi­nal match of six match­es played on the day.

Ac­tion in the first quar­ter was bal­anced with De­fence Force, play­ing with­out star play­er Steven "Lighter" Lewis due to in­jury, keep­ing on par of­fen­sive­ly with Strak­er as the scores stayed tied at 22 at the end of the open­ing pe­ri­od.

In the sec­ond quar­ter, De­fence Force de­spite the ef­forts of for­ward Kyeon Joseph (10) and guard Jamille King (10) fell be­hind by five (36-31) points at the half-way mark.

On the re­sump­tion, the Strak­er-unit came out much more ag­gres­sive on of­fence and lift­ed its de­fence to lim­it the army/coast guard com­bi­na­tion team's chances at the bas­ket. This helped Stark­er gain a 48-36 lead head­ing in­to the fourth ses­sion.

Not much changed in the fi­nal quar­ter as Strak­er al­so boost­ed by guard Joel Hinds (9) and Tris­ton Ben­jamin (9), out­played De­fence Force to seal the 20-point vic­to­ry.

Sim­i­lar­ly in the two match­es played in the women's di­vi­sion ear­li­er turned out to be lop­sided as well.

Six-foot­er post-play­er Jameela Mc­Carthy played a ma­jor role in Strak­er Nets huge 83-59 vic­to­ry over En­ter­prise, notch­ing a match-high 24 points. Her team­mates for­ward Crys­tal-Ann George added 20 and point guard Sue Lin Tang net­ted 17 for the win­ner.

Caris­sa Ram­di­al scored a team-high 18, Bre­an­na Charles poured in 13 and Jami­ka Knight net­ted 13, in a los­ing ef­fort.

The oth­er match saw Ezi­ta Best pro­duce a match-high 22 points to pi­lot Bri­an Chase Acad­e­my to a mas­sive 76-14 win over new­com­er, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), who had no play­er reach­ing dou­ble-fig­ures.

There were more one-sided match­es in the low­er di­vi­sion with Bri­an Chase Acad­e­my led by Esan Babb with 25, get­ting a 30-point (77-47) win over 500 Hawks in the Un­der-19 Di­vi­sion.

In the U-15 cat­e­go­ry which is al­lowed to use fe­male play­ers up to the age of 17, Mal­oney Pac­ers crushed Grande Young Stars, 91-23 af­ter lead­ing 47-9 at the half and 500 Hawks beat En­ter­prise 56-37. Uth­man Bi­lal starred for Hawks with a grand 31-point per­for­mance.