Point guard Jef­frey Har­ris was un­stop­pable in help­ing Strak­er Nets keep a clean slate en­ter­ing the "Big Eight" phase of the Bar­ry Stew­art In­vi­ta­tion­al Bas­ket­ball League, de­feat­ing Mal­oney Pac­ers, 78-64 at the Mal­oney In­door Sports Are­na on Tues­day night.

Har­ris scored a match-high 24 points dur­ing the in­tense en­counter which saw Strak­er lift­ed its in­ten­si­ty as the match pro­gressed to com­plete its 11th win on the trot. This was in the sec­ond match of a Group A dou­ble-head­er.

The play was even in the first quar­ter with the scores tied at 19-19, head­ing in­to the sec­ond pe­ri­od. Dri­ven by Har­ris, Strak­er forged ahead to gain an 11-point ad­van­tage, lead­ing 46-35 at the half.

On the re­sump­tion, Pac­ers boost­ed by Shakeil Bertrand (21) and Yan­nick Tap­pin (18) tried to lessen their team's deficit but Strak­er with guard Sadi­ki Guer­ra and cen­tre Al­lis­ter Mar­tin step­ping up of­fen­sive­ly with Har­ris moved fur­ther out front to hold a 65-50 lead at the end of the third quar­ter.

Strak­er was able to main­tain its con­trol in­to the fourth and fi­nal pe­ri­od and sealed the 14-point win in the round-robin phase in the new for­mat.

Guer­ra was sec­ond-best in scor­ing for Strak­er with 19 while Mar­tin added 10 in dom­i­nat­ing the low-post area.

In the open­ing match-up, De­tour Shak At­tack made light work of Po­lice beat­ing them 75-55 in a match that saw the for­mer team lead from the jump-ball.

Much of the win­ner's points came down low with post-play­ers Miguel Williams, top scor­ing with 24 while his team­mate Shawn Lawrence net­ting 17. Small-for­ward Reynold "Pie" Hospedales al­so scored in dou­ble-fig­ures with 12.

For the po­lice­men, for­ward Ronell Win­ter (14), and cen­tres Dex­troy Man­swell (13) and Don Wilkin­son (10) were the main scor­ers in their open­ing match of group A, which con­tin­ues tonight at the Jean Pierre Com­plex in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain from 7 pm.

Ac­tion in Group B was sched­uled to start last night at the South­ern Re­gion­al In­door Sports Are­na in Pleas­antville.