RACHAEL THOMP­SON-KING

rachael.king@guardian.co.tt

Quar­ters Unit­ed swept the se­ries fi­nal of the Game On Bas­ket­ball Tour­na­ment, 2-1, to clinch the ti­tle over Po­lice on the week­end and take home the $5,000 first place prize.

On Sun­day, pi­lot­ed by post-play­er Chike Au­gus­tine with 15 points, Quar­ters de­feat­ed the po­lice­men 52-43 in a low-scor­ing game three match-up at the Shirlyn Bas­ket­ball Court in Pleas­antville, San Fer­nan­do.

Au­gus­tine along with guard Tris­ton Ben­jamin (11) and cen­tre Jer­rell Door­bal (10) had the Quar­ters unit ahead from the jump, lead­ing 17-7 at the end of the first quar­ter. By half time, Po­lice was un­able to make any head­way and still trailed by dou­ble-dig­its (27-16), head­ing in­to the third quar­ter.

It was in this pe­ri­od though that the men in grey and blue, led by post-play­er Dex­troy Man­swell (18) and point guard Joel Hinds (11), start­ed to trim its deficit bring­ing it to six (41-35) to close play in that ses­sion.

De­spite the im­pres­sive run by Po­lice, lead­ing in­to the fourth and fi­nal quar­ter, Quar­ters con­tin­ued to re­sist and outscored their op­po­nents, 11-8, to seal the nine-point vic­to­ry.

The day be­fore in game two, which was de­layed by a week due to bad weath­er, Po­lice claimed a 57-50 win.

Play in the first quar­ter was bal­anced with Quar­ters lead­ing by a nar­row one (11-10) point. The po­lice­men won the sec­ond pe­ri­od push­ing through to take a 28-26 ad­van­tage at half­time. But Quar­ters didn’t stay down for long and worked their way back to take a two-point (40-38) lead in the third. How­ev­er, Po­lice re­bound­ed in the fourth and pulled away to win by sev­en to lev­el the se­ries 1-1.

For Po­lice, Nathy­on Lewis pro­duced a match-high 15 points and Mika­hail Williams, a sec­ond-best, 11 on of­fense.

Door­bal was the lead­ing scor­er for Quar­ters with 10.

This af­ter the pre­vi­ous Sat­ur­day, Quar­ters de­feat­ed Po­lice 71-65 in a com­pet­i­tive open­ing match of the se­ries fi­nal.

Po­lice re­ceived $2,000 for sec­ond place while Hoop Na­tion col­lect­ed the $1,000 prize for third place. Hoop Na­tion beat Los Ba­jos Lak­ers, 84-81, in the one-off third-place play­off match.

The bas­ket­ball com­pe­ti­tion or­gan­ised by Kevin Flem­ming fea­tured 10 teams split in­to two groups. In group A were Po­lice, Hoop Na­tion, Siparia Ball Play­ers, Bronx and Roy J Ballers while in group B had Quar­ters, Lak­ers, Mor­vant Oil­bird Bas­ket­ball Acad­e­my, Ad­vanced Ge­net­ics La Ro­maine and Waraos.