Ari­ma Cen­tral Sec­ondary and Bon Air Sec­ondary se­cure hard-fought vic­to­ries in the boys’ Un­der-15 di­vi­sion to jump­start cam­paigns as the T&T Schools Bas­ket­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTS­BA) East Zone league re­sumed fol­low­ing the Car­ni­val hia­tus at the Mal­oney In­door Sports Are­na on Thurs­day.

​In the open­ing clash, Ari­ma Cen­tral Sec­ondary over­came a slug­gish start to de­feat Trin­i­ty Col­lege East 33-24.

​While the game re­mained com­pet­i­tive through the first half with the half­time score read­ing 19-18 with Trin­i­ty East trail­ing, Ari­ma Cen­tral’s Nikho­lai Cunin proved to be the dif­fer­ence-mak­er.

Cunin dom­i­nat­ed the score­board, fin­ish­ing with a game-high 19 points. Sup­port­ing him was Evan Durham, who chipped in with sev­en points to help stretch the lead in the clos­ing min­utes.

​Trin­i­ty Col­lege East showed flash­es of bril­liance, par­tic­u­lar­ly from King Hold­er (10) and Aiden Bap­tiste (8), but they ul­ti­mate­ly strug­gled to find a sec­ondary scor­ing threat to match Ari­ma’s of­fen­sive pres­ence.

​The sec­ond match of the dou­ble-head­er was a much tighter af­fair, with Bon Air Sec­ondary nar­row­ly es­cap­ing with a 33-29 win over a re­silient St George’s Col­lege.

​The scor­ing duo of Ri­car­do Fer­gu­son (14) and Kishron Jack­son (13) ac­count­ed for near­ly all of Bon Air’s of­fence. Their abil­i­ty to con­vert un­der pres­sure in the fi­nal pe­ri­od proved vi­tal, as St George’s utilised a bal­anced scor­ing at­tack to keep the match with­in reach un­til the fi­nal whis­tle.

​St George’s dis­played some depth, with Mekhi An­toine (7) lead­ing a group of four play­ers, in­clud­ing Kalebh Smythe, Kaelow Bethelmy, and Is­rael Boynes, who all fin­ished with six points. De­spite the col­lec­tive ef­fort, they couldn’t find the late-game bas­ket need­ed to over­take Bon Air.

Ac­tion con­tin­ues on Mon­day with an U-20 dou­ble-head­er.

Re­sults

Boys’ U-15 Di­vi­sion

Ari­ma Cen­tral 33 (19) (Nikho­lai Cunin 19, Evan Durham 7) vs Trin­i­ty East 24 (18) (King Hold­er 10, Aiden Bap­tiste 8).

Bon Air 33 (21) (Ri­car­do Fer­gu­son 14, Kishron Jack­son 13) vs St George’s 29 (12) (Mekhi An­toine 7, Kalebh Smythe 6, Kaelow Bethelmy 6, Is­rael Boynes 6).

Mon­day's match­es

Mon­day

Boys’ U-20 Di­vi­sion

UWI 6th Form vs Man­zanil­la, 1 pm

St go­erge’s vs Brazil, 2 pm

Tues­day

Boys’ U-15 Di­vi­sion: El Do­ra­do West vs San Juan South, noon.

Boys U-17 Di­vi­sion

Trin­i­ty East vs Tu­na­puna, 1 pm

Bon Air vs San Juan South, 2 pm