Tyrese Fields, Shakeil Bertrand and the Mal­oney Pac­ers pro­duced a com­mand­ing per­for­mance in their 69-57 vic­to­ry over the De­fence Force in the First Di­vi­sion of the Kelvin Roberts North Zone Bas­ket­ball Com­mis­sion’s League at the Wood­brook Youth Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain, on Sun­day night.

It was in the fi­nal match of a triple-head­er which saw Coach KG Elite and Sweaters Vet­er­ans get wins in their re­spec­tive Un­der-17 and Over-45 Di­vi­sions.

Fields had 21 points for the youth­ful Pac­ers unit. Bertrand fin­ished with 2o points in a match their team led at the end of each quar­ter. Pac­ers raced to a 23-15 ad­van­tage at the end of the first quar­ter. How­ev­er, on the restart De­fence Force, pi­lot­ed by Kens­ley Sandy, made a come­back in the sec­ond pe­ri­od, cut­ting its deficit to four (25-21) be­fore ty­ing the score at 27-27 but Pac­ers man­aged to re­gain the lead, 37-31, at the half.

De­fence Force did not go away though and through the ef­forts of post play­er Ke­van Bac­quain, matched their op­po­nents point-for-point in the third quar­ter to stay close to Pac­ers, coached by na­tion­al 3x3 coach Chris­tor­pher Jack­son Charles, who guid­ed the T&T team to bronze at the 2023 San­ti­a­go Pan Am Games in Chile. The third quar­ter scores read 55-49.

In the fourth and fi­nal pe­ri­od, Bertrand, who re­cent­ly grad­u­at­ed from North­west­ern State Uni­ver­si­ty af­ter com­plet­ing a bas­ket­ball schol­ar­ship, was un­stop­pable in the post area, at­tack­ing the bas­ket and get­ting sev­er­al put-backs to keep his team ahead as they outscored De­fence Force, 14-12, for the 12-point win.

Sandy had 18 points in the loss for the army/coast guard com­bi­na­tion team while Bac­quain, chipped in with 12 points.

In the open­ing match, trio JJ Ed­wards-Cara­chi­o­lo and Taal­ib Daniel got Coach KG Elite past Roy­al­ty Bas­ket­ball Acad­e­my, 74-56, in the Un­der-17 Di­vi­sion match. Ed­wards-Cara­chi­o­lo top­scored with 21 points and Daniel was sec­ond-best with 20 for the win­ner who al­so got 14 from Josi­ah John-An­drew.

For Roy­al­ty, Ja­son Best (17), Isa­iah Mitchell (13) and Ki­mani John (10) were the main scor­ers in a los­ing ef­fort.

Lat­er in the Over-45 Di­vi­sion, Sweaters Vet­er­ans eased past NFM Vet­er­ans, 67-34. Kofi Camp­bell scored a match-high 21 points for the win­ner.

Ac­tion re­sumed Tues­day and con­tin­ues Thurs­day with a dou­ble-head­er in the First Di­vi­sion from 6.30 pm.

Re­sults

First Di­vi­sion

Mal­oney Pac­ers 69 (Tyrese Fields 21, Shakeil Bertrand 20, Pe­ter Alex­is 14) vs De­fence Force 57 (Kens­ley Sandy 18, Ke­van Bac­quain 12). Quar­ter scores: 1st 23-15, 2nd 37-31, 3rd 55-49 (All in favour of Pac­ers).

U-17 Di­vi­sion

Coach KG Elite 74 (JJ Ed­wards-Cara­chi­o­lo 21, Taal­ib Daniel 20, Josi­ah John-An­drew 14) vs Roy­al­ty 56 (Ja­son Best 17, Isa­iah Mitchell 13, Ki­mani John 10). Quar­ter scores: 1st 17-13, 2nd 39-30, 3rd 54-40 (All in favour of Coach KG Elite)

O-45 Di­vi­sion

Sweaters Vet­er­ans 67 (Kofi Camp­bell 21, Dex­ter Bridge­wa­ter 10) vs NFM Vet­er­ans 34 (Caza­mies Gilbert 8). Quar­ter scores: 1st 16-11, 2nd 35-20, 3rd 52-23 (All in favour of Sweaters).

Match­es

Thurs­day

First Di­vi­sion

To­geth­er­ness vs Spar­tans TT, 6.30 pm

Strak­er Nets vs De­fence Force, 8.30 pm

Sun­day

U-17 Di­vi­sion: Mal­oney Pac­ers vs Ba­sic Acad­e­my, 3 pm

Over-45 Di­vi­sion: East West Vets vs De­fence Force, 5 pm

First Di­vi­sion: Coach KG Elite vs Trail­blaz­ers, 7 pm