Cale­do­nia Clip­pers are one win away from be­ing crowned men's cham­pi­on of the Na­tion­al Bas­ket­ball Fed­er­a­tion of T&T (NBFTT) Na­tion­al In­vi­ta­tion­al Cham­pi­onships (NIC) af­ter edg­ing Sto­ries of Suc­cess (SOS) Bas­ket­ball Acad­e­my, 77-76 on Thurs­day night at the Mal­oney In­door Sport Are­na.

With 0.1 sec­onds on the clock, guard Adri­an Joseph stepped up and knocked down one of two free throws to see the North Zone cham­pi­on to a, 1-0 lead in the best-in-three se­ries fi­nal against the reig­in­ing East win­ner.

The SOS con­tin­gent strug­gled of­fen­sive­ly from the tip-off while Clip­pers jumped out with an ear­ly lead through the ef­forts of cen­tre and cap­tain Miguel Williams.

With a sig­nif­i­cant­ly al­tered line-up due to the ab­sence of key starters Ah­keem "Fa­to" Boyd and Mori­ba De Fre­itas, SOS qui­et­ly crept pass its ri­vals head­ing in­to the sec­ond quar­ter with a sev­en-point lead (22-15).

The SOS out­fit, known for their fast-pace game, ad­just­ed their ap­proach dis­play­ing more pa­tience and self-con­trol on the of­fen­sive end while turn­ing up the heat de­fen­sive­ly giv­ing them a 14-point cush­ion at the end of the sec­ond pe­ri­od.

SOS con­tin­ued to dom­i­nate as the game un­fold­ed, un­til Joseph re­turned to the floor mid­way through the third pe­ri­od and shoul­dered the Clip­pers’ of­fense cut­ting the deficit to sin­gle dig­its dur­ing the quar­ter. How­ev­er, with an as­sertive dunk and for­mi­da­ble shoot­ing by youth phe­nom­e­non Ah­keel "Smal­ly" Boyd, SOS main­tained a dou­ble-dig­it lead (66-56) go­ing in­to the last pe­ri­od.

In the fourth quar­ter, SOS start­ed with­out its main con­trib­u­tor Boyd as he slipped in­to foul trou­ble late in the third. In the ab­sence of Boyd’s on-court pres­ence, Kem­rick Julien stepped in and main­tained the in­ten­si­ty of the nail-bit­ing af­fair.

With a few sec­onds re­main­ing, Je­lani Val­ley of SOS sunk two cru­cial free-throws to give his team a two-point lead (76-74) putting the sea­soned Clip­pers un­der added pres­sure. In the height of the com­press­ing at­mos­phere, Clip­pers de­pend­ed on the hero­ics of Joseph who knocked down a tough fade-away jumper over two de­fend­ers in the deep cor­ner to even the scores 76-76 with 16.3 sec­onds re­main­ing.

Play­er/coach Kern George made a last haul from three-point range to try and steal a win over Cale­do­nia in the dy­ing sec­onds of the game. With the re­bound se­cured by Joseph with time still on the clock, Val­ley com­mit­ted an un­ex­pect­ed foul on Joseph to the shock of all pa­trons, al­low­ing Clip­pers an­oth­er free-throw op­por­tu­ni­ty with 0.1 sec­onds re­main­ing.

Joseph, with the added pres­sure of not dis­ap­point­ing his team­mates and all Clip­pers fans in at­ten­dance, gave them quite a scare as he missed the first free-throw at­tempt. How­ev­er, Joseph re-gath­ered him­self and com­fort­ably made the sec­ond char­i­ty shot to give Cale­do­nia the one-point win.

Ear­li­er, Po­lice Ser­vice emerged vic­to­ri­ous over De­fence Force, 102-99 in over­time to fin­ish third in the in­au­gur­al com­pe­ti­tion.

In the ab­sence of vet­er­an Steven "Lighter" Lewis and sharp­shoot­er Jamille King, the slight­ly di­min­ished army-coast­guard com­bi­na­tion team was neck-and-neck with its Po­lice ad­ver­saries head­ing in­to the fourth pe­ri­od with a one-point ad­van­tage (66-65).

The po­lice­men ap­peared to be the more ea­ger squad as cap­tain Don Wilkin­son (17) and lead scor­er Fab­rice Fish­er (31) re­lent­less­ly at­tacked the Army's de­fence com­bin­ing for 14 of the team’s 22 points in the fi­nal pe­ri­od. The De­fence Force unit was par­al­lel in their at­tacks how­ev­er, they strug­gled to get the time­ly calls in their favour. De­spite the frus­tra­tion, top scor­er Kyeon Joseph (32) and Kens­ley Sandy (19) con­tin­ued to play with ag­gres­sion to keep their mem­bers in close range.

With the De­fence Force hang­ing on in the fi­nal sec­onds, vet­er­an guard Der­rick Box­hill (17) knocked down a big-time three-point­er ty­ing the game up 87-87 with 3.3 sec­onds re­main­ing in reg­u­la­tion. The shot which wowed the crowd, gave De­fence Force a fight­ing chance head­ing in­to over­time. How­ev­er, Po­lice pre­vailed in the ex­tra pe­ri­od se­cur­ing a three-point vic­to­ry.

RE­SULTS

Fi­nal (Game one)

Clip­pers 77 (Adri­an Joseph 24, Kurt Chris­t­ian 14, Miguel Williams 12) vs SOS 76 (Kern George 25, Ah­keel Boyd 20, Kem­rick Julien 16). Quar­ter scores: 1st. 22-15, 2nd. 48-34, 3rd. 66-56 (All in favour of SOS).

Third Place Play­off

Po­lice 102 (Fab­rice Fish­er 31, Don Wilkin­son 17, Dex­troy Man­swell 16) vs De­fence Force 99 (Kyeon Joe­sph 32, Kense­ly Sandy 19, Der­rick

Box­hill 17). Quar­ter scores: 1st.25-19 (D/Force), 2nd. 45-44 (Po­lice), 3rd. 66-65 (D Force). 4th. 87-87.

Sun­day's match

Cale­do­nia Clip­pers vs SOS, 6 pm