Kervis King and Kevin Sunich com­bined to lead East West Vets to a hard-fought one-point win over De­fence Force Vet­er­ans to claim the Over-45 Di­vi­sion ti­tle to close off the Kelvin Roberts North Zone Bas­ket­ball League on Tues­day night.

Play­ing at the Wood­brook Youth Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain, King pro­duced a match-high 21 points and Sunich poured in 11 to help East West beat the army/coast­guard com­bi­na­tion team to a 47-46 vic­to­ry in game three of the best-in-four se­ries fi­nal.

The open­ing match­es of the se­ries were in­tense be­tween the teams, with De­fence Force tak­ing game one, scor­ing a 58-46 win. Then in game two, East West lev­elled the se­ries, edg­ing De­fence Force, 64-63.

Game three was just as thrilling with East West, edg­ing ahead 13-12 at the end of the first quar­ter. East West pulled fur­ther ahead in the sec­ond to lead by four (26-22) at the half. On the re­sump­tion, De­fence Force, boost­ed by Steven "Lighter" Lewis, went on a run in the third quar­ter and outscored East West, 15-9, to take a two-point (37-35) ad­van­tage, head­ing in­to the fourth pe­ri­od.

In the fi­nal quar­ter, the teams con­tin­ued to ex­change bas­kets with nei­ther unit be­ing able to es­tab­lish more than a two-point lead. Lewis con­tin­ued to at­tack the bas­ket for De­fence Force and earned trips to the free throw line but strug­gled to con­vert. Un­like down the oth­er end, King and Si­mon Munro were more ac­cu­rate at the line, each hit­ting three free throws to get East West the one-point win.

Third place in the O-45 Di­vi­sion was de­cid­ed last week, at the same venue, with Vet­er­an Sweaters de­feat­ing De­tour Shak At­tack, 60-59, in their play­off match.

Re­sults

O-45 Di­vi­sion fi­nal (game 3)

De­fence Force 46 (Steven Lewis 14) vs East West Vets 47 (Kervis King 21, Kevin Sunich 11). Quar­ters: 1st 13-12 (East West), 2nd 26-22 (East West), 3rd 37-35 (De­fence Force).