Cale­do­nia Clip­pers fi­nal­ly did it, they won their first-ever Men's First Di­vi­sion ti­tle in the North Zone Bas­ket­ball League.

It was in no way an easy task as they had to take down a rag­ing Strak­er Nets, which took them to the brink in Game 3 on Tues­day night but the team's re­cruits, shoot­ing guard Adri­an Joseph and for­ward Kurt "Ko­to" Chris­t­ian did just enough to seal the 103-99 over­time win to claim the pre­vi­ous­ly un­reach­able crown.

Some 400 spec­ta­tors turned up at the Jean Pierre Com­plex in Mu­cu­rapo ex­pect­ing a thriller and that's ex­act­ly what they got in the de­cid­ing match in the best-in-three se­ries fi­nal which Clip­pers won 2-1.

"I feel great right now," said Joseph, who again led Clip­pers of­fen­sive­ly. "It was just about com­ing out and try­ing my best to fit in­to any team I play with. I played with a great bunch of guys with the Cale­do­nia team. I felt com­fort­able, I felt the love in the house and we ex­e­cut­ed well and got the vic­to­ry."

The win al­so al­lowed Joseph to main­tain a flaw­less record in the zone, win­ning two ti­tles in as many cam­paigns af­ter reign­ing in 2015 with Po­lice, the on­ly oth­er time he played in the North com­pe­ti­tion.

The La Ro­maine bas­ket­baller scored a match-high 27 points in a clash which his team trailed at the end of the open­ing quar­ter, 20-18 in the first and 47-42 at the half be­fore forg­ing back to earn a three-point (73-70) ad­van­tage in the third pe­ri­od.

The Bar­ry Stew­art-coached Strak­er Nets unit did not go away though and pro­pelled by Sadi­ki Guer­ra (21), Jef­frey Har­ris (20) and Richard Guisep­pi got their team on lev­el terms (82-82) this af­ter forc­ing Clip­pers to com­mit three 24-shot clock vi­o­la­tions. The trio con­vert­ed those turnovers in­to points, con­nect­ing shots main­ly from be­yond the three-point arc.

With the scores tied and 2.31 to go in reg­u­la­tion time, nei­ther team sur­pris­ing­ly could not pro­duce a bas­ket. In the fi­nal mo­ment, Guisep­pi had a chance to score the win­ner but it was off tar­get, send­ing play in­to over­time.

In the ex­tra pe­ri­od, Chris­t­ian showed his lead­er­ship qual­i­ties that had served him well in lead­ing pre­vi­ous club De­tour Shak At­tack to sev­er­al North Zone ti­tles over the years. He and Joseph un­der the guid­ance of coach Floyd "Sen­a­tor" Glean worked in tan­dem and pulled off the win.

"It's the fi­nal, its the Cham­pi­onships. We knew it was go­ing to be tough so we were out there play­ing as hard as we could and the game got down to crunch time and it was dif­fi­cult, both teams want­ed as much as the oth­er team but we did it," said Joseph, whose ef­forts as well as his team­mates brought a smile on their coach's face.

Glean said, "As a coach of 21 years chas­ing the North Zone ti­tle for al­most 40 years and this is my first vic­to­ry. It was elat­ing. It's some­thing I ap­pre­ci­ate be­cause the North Zone is one of the bet­ter zones in T&T with teams like Po­lice, Army and the team that we just played Stark­er Nets, they have been play­ing strong for a cou­ple of years well so it's a re­al­ly good vic­to­ry for us."

Clip­pers won the open­ing match of the se­ries, 72-69. Nets re­bound­ed to take the sec­ond af­fair 85-77 in over­time be­fore Clip­pers closed the se­ries.

"The first game we won in the same man­ner, the sec­ond one I blame my­self for tech­ni­cal­i­ties in how I run the last three min­utes but this time we didn't make no mis­takes we stick to the plan, we played hard and came out with the vic­to­ry. It wasn't no glitch or noth­ing this time."

Stew­art ap­pre­ci­at­ed the ef­fort of his team as well as the or­gan­is­ers of the league say­ing: "The se­ries was quite com­pet­i­tive. Two of the best teams around this year and all-in-all the lev­el of play was high. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it didn't have much younger play­ers in the fi­nal and for me, as a coach, it's a sad thing to see for bas­ket­ball but oth­er than that it was very ex­cit­ing and com­pet­i­tive.

"I think the North Zone rep­re­sen­ta­tives came out good and tried their best to have the tour­na­ment this year and I think it was ex­cep­tion­al for the crowd that came out here tonight (Tues­day)."

Re­sults

Clip­per 103 (Adri­an Joseph 27, Kurt ‘Ko­to’ Chris­t­ian 19, Keny­at­ta Al­fred 18) vs Nets 99 (Sadi­ki Guer­ra 21, Jef­frey Har­ris 20). Quar­ter scores: 1st. 20-18 (Nets), 47-42 (Nets), 70-73 (Clip­pers), 4th 82-82.