Point-guard Wes­ley Vin­cent scored the win­ning bas­ket with 55 sec­onds to play in game two of the fi­nals of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Hoop of Life Com­mu­ni­ty Bas­ket­ball League as Cale­do­nia de­feat­ed Mal­oney 63-61 to take the $1.5 mil­lion first prize at the Mal­oney Out­door courts, on Sat­ur­day night.

Star of the night and un­doubt­ed­ly the most out­stand­ing play­er of the fi­nal-four play-offs was for­ward Kyeon Joseph, who scored 28 points which in­clud­ed five three-point­ers that sep­a­rat­ed the teams in the end. In fact, he con­nect­ed on one of his long-range shots with 1:13 to go which moved Cale­do­nia in­to pole po­si­tion 61-60.

Cale­do­nia, which won game one on Thurs­day night at the Par­adise Heights Bas­ket­ball Court in Mor­vant, led 21-16 af­ter the first quar­ter and went up 36-26 at half-time.

Mal­oney in an at­tempt to avoid a sweep and a sec­ond cham­pi­onships se­ries loss in con­sec­u­tive years, ral­lied to re­duce the deficit to one (50-49).

In the fi­nal quar­ter it was the Joseph/Vin­cent show as the pair at­tacked the host with three-point­er bas­kets and lay-ups off dri­ves in an ag­gres­sive fash­ion, but Mal­oney kept the op­po­si­tion in check with al­most every po­si­tion.

How­ev­er, point-guard Kevon Nor­eiga made a steal with with less than 15 sec­onds to go raced down the court for an un­con­test­ed lay-up but to the sur­prised of the crowd he missed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to lev­el the scores to send the game in­to over-time, and Cale­do­nia se­cured the ball and held it un­til the fi­nal sec­ond ticked away. In fact, no points were scored in the fi­nal 40-sec­onds of the con­test.

Cale­do­nia and their sup­port­ers cel­e­brat­ed their first ma­jor ti­tle for many years in all for­mats of lo­cal bas­ket­ball be­hind Joseph's 28 points and Vin­cent's 12. Na­tion­al cen­tre Wilt Vin­cent showed for the first time in the fi­nals with 12 valu­able points.

Joseph had 32 points in his team's game-one win and Vin­cent 25.

Joseph, a for­mer MVP of the Schools league scored 115 points (22, 31, 32 and 28) in his four match­es for an av­er­age of 28.3 points per game, while Vin­cent tal­lied 93 (37, 19, 25 and 12) in his four match­es pro­duced an av­er­age of 23.1 points per con­test.

For Mal­oney which lost the 2013 fi­nals on their home court to La Ro­maine af­ter win­ning game-one, cen­tre Shawn Lawrence and Nor­eiga scored 14 points each.

Cale­do­nia play­ers and tech­ni­cal staff now join Laven­tille (2012), La Ro­maine (2013) as cham­pi­ons. The team earned $1.5 mil­lion of which 50 per­cent will be shared equal­ly be­tween the 12 play­ers and four-mem­ber tech­ni­cal staff, while the oth­er 50 per cent will go to­wards a com­mu­ni­ty project in Cale­do­nia.

Mean­while, Mal­oney will share half of $500,000 and the oth­er 50 per cent will go to­wards a com­mu­ni­ty project.

re­sults

Quar­ter-fi­nals

Mara­bel­la beat San Juan (111-67 & 84-72)

Laven­tille beat En­ter­prise (92-71 & 63-53)

Cale­do­nia beat Rio Claro (85-54 & 83-74)

Mal­oney beat San­gre Grande (86-69 & 79-71)

Se­mi-fi­nals (Game-1)

Mara­bel­la lost to Cale­doinia, 77-73

Cale­do­nia beat Mara­bel­la 75-67

Cale­do­nia win se­ries 2-0

Laven­tille lost to Mal­oney 74-65

Mal­oney beat Laven­tille 78-72

Mal­oney win se­ries 2-0

THIRD PLACE

Mara­bel­la lost to Laven­tille 70-66

Laven­tille lost to Mara­bel­la 77-75

Laven­tille won by virtue of a su­pe­ri­or points dif­fer­ence of +3

?CHAM­PI­ONSHIP Se­ries

Cale­do­nia beat Mal­oney 71-70

Mal­oney lost to Cale­do­nia 63-61

Cale­do­nia won the cham­pi­onships 2-0