RACHAEL THOMP­SON-KING

rachael.king@guardian.co.tt

No one could have pre­dict­ed the re­sult of the match-up be­tween Buck­ets and Sto­ries of Suc­cess (SOS) Bas­ket­ball Acad­e­my, the top two teams in the San­gre Grande Ruff N Ready 4v4 Bas­ket­ball League, in the end, it was SOS pre­vail­ing with a nar­row 41-39 vic­to­ry.

This was in the fi­nal match of a triple-head­er played on the pre­vi­ous Sun­day at the Fos­ter Road Bas­ket­ball court.

The match was very in­tense as both teams ex­changed bas­kets con­tin­u­ous­ly, go­ing all out on de­fence. On such de­fen­sive game plan in­stalled by SOS of Mal­oney, was to at­tack the bas­ket hop­ing to put Michael "Big Mike" Jerome of Buck­ets (Arou­ca) in­to foul trou­ble but his team­mates Patrick Sci­pio and Nicholas Med­i­na kept an­swer­ing SOS's every bas­ket.

In the fi­nal mo­ments of the match with the score­board read­ing 40-39 in favour of SOS, Sci­pio fired a two-point­er from be­yond the arc but missed which re­sult­ed in SOS gain­ing pos­ses­sion. SOS's Ah­keel "Smal­ly" Boyd crossed his de­fend­er and at­tempt­ed a step back two-point­er but he too missed and his team­mate Jef­fery Har­ris grabbed the re­bound.

Har­ris post­ed up his de­fend­er Sci­pio while "Smal­ly" sneaked be­hind his de­fend­er "Big Mike" and re­ceived a one-hand­ed bounced past from Har­ris, to com­plete the match-win­ner, hit­ting the 41-mark­er to earn the bonus point. Once a team reach­es 41 points be­fore stop­page time (12-minute stop­page time per half), it re­ceives four points to­wards the stand­ings in­stead of three points. (There are two ways a team can win, the first is hav­ing the most points at the end of stop­page time or the team, which reach­es 41 points first, wins and get a point bonus.)

Ac­cord­ing to Har­ris, who is the co­or­di­na­tor of the League, the rule helps to in­crease the ex­cite­ment.

"The com­pe­ti­tion is hard­er and teams are forced to play de­fence," he said.

It was the first loss for Buck­ets in six match­es, to lead the stand­ings with 20 points from five wins, the same as the un­beat­en SOS team, who has 19 points though from five wins.

In the sec­ond match of the day, Grande Ext team re­bound­ed from its dis­ap­point­ing 30-29 loss to Sweaters (San­gre Grande), the day be­fore, to beat Rebels, 38-30. Nicholas Solomon and Kedan John were key in the win as all their shots from be­yond the arc hit the tar­get.

The oth­er match saw the Ball Hun­gry team of St Au­gus­tine bat­tle Sweaters to push its name up the stand­ings af­ter a 38-25 win thanks to the con­tri­bu­tion of Dan­ny De Suze, who had a great shoot­ing night which Sweaters had no an­swer for.

In the oth­er match­es played the day be­fore, Ball Hun­gry got a 39-33 win over Rebels, falling just short of the 41-mark­er by two points. Bran­don Kel­ly from Ball Hun­gry took ad­van­tage of the short de­fend­ers who failed to ef­fec­tive­ly pro­tect the rim.

Lat­er, SOS eased past San­gre Grande All-Stars, 41-30.