Kevin Sunich

North Zone Bas­ket­ball League Men's 2010 First Di­vi­sion Knock-out cham­pi­ons Strak­er Nets will face De­tour Shak At­tack in the Pre­lim­i­nary round ac­tion of the Na­tion­al Bas­ket­ball Fed­er­a­tion of T&T (NBFT&T) Na­tion­al Knock-out tour­na­ment at the Jean Pierre Com­plex, tonight from 8 pm. The open­ing match on the evening's pro­gramme will see North Zone's Courts Hori­zon tak­ing on Mal­ick Tigers from the East zone. Nets, who won their North Zone first ti­tle in over five years, af­ter de­feat­ing Shak At­tack in the fi­nal, will be fan­cy­ing their chances of get­ting past the Laven­tille-based team, even though they were beat­en by the said team 2-0 in the North Zone Big-four semi­fi­nals.

Shak At­tack on the oth­er hand, who went down to De­fence Force 4-1 in the Big Four ti­tle se­ries last month, will be hop­ing to cap­ture the last piece of sil­ver­ware for the year, af­ter reach­ing two fi­nals but with­out suc­cess. This tour­na­ment which will re­place the tra­di­tion­al Na­tion­al Club Cham­pi­onship for this year, was launched at the Lo­cal Or­gan­is­ing Com­mit­tee (LOC) of­fice at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, last Thurs­day. Some 16 men's teams from nine zones will be vy­ing for the ti­tle and $20,000, while eight from three zones, will do bat­tle on the women side, which will be con­test­ed with the use of a dou­ble elim­i­na­tion for­mat for the ti­tle and $10,000.

To­day's Fix­tures

Men's

Strak­er Nets vs De­tour Shak At­tack

Women's

Courts Hori­zon vs Tigers

Men's Over­all Draw Match-up:

Va­len­cia Heat (1) vs Po­lice

De­tour Shak At­tack (2) vs Strak­er Nets

Bar­rack Boys (3) vs Back­street Boys

De­fence Force (4) vs Ruff

Roy­al Ex­tra Li­ons (5) vs Gi­ants

Petro Jazz (6) vs Courts Hill­bounc­ers

UTC Mal­oney Pac­ers (7) vs Bronx

Trin­mar Marines (8) vs South Side

Women's Over­all Draw Match-up

Al­pha En­gi­neer­ing Star Seek­ers vs Strak­er Nets (1 vs 2)

Tigers vs Courts Hori­zon (3 vs 4)

De­fence Force vs Bri­an Chase Acad­e­my (5 vs 6)

Po­lice vs Courts Hill­bounc­ers (7 vs 8)