Kevin Sunich

The T&T men choked down the stretch and as a re­sult lost to the British Vir­gin Is­land (BVI), in the sec­ond semi­fi­nal of the event's 20th Edi­tion of the Caribbean Bas­ket­ball Con­fed­er­a­tion (CBC) Cham­pi­onship be­ing played in Tor­to­la, British Vir­gin Is­lands. The Twin Is­land team look­ing to avenge their loss to the BVI in the 2007 edi­tion played in Puer­to Ri­co, were at the brink of pulling it off, be­fore things fell apart.

T&T who played un­beat­en up to the semis, went down to the home team 76-73 af­ter lead­ing for most of the en­counter. With un­der a minute to go in the game T&T held a 73-72 lead, how­ev­er, the home team got two bas­kets, one each from Randy Michael George and Kennedy Bass, to pull off the win. T&T outscored their coun­ter­parts 22-15 in the first quar­ter, and by the half held a 38-31 lead af­ter both teams scored 16 points in the sec­ond pe­ri­od. The third quar­ter be­longed to the home team as they out scored T&T 27-20 to tie the score 58-58 head­ing in­to the fi­nal pe­ri­od.

While the Twin Is­land men out re­bound­ed their coun­ter­parts, they com­mit­ted sev­en turnovers, which proved to be very cru­cial in the end. Bass and Hal­stead Charles Chiver­ton led BVI with 17 points each, while point-guard Ian Cur­tis Young, who played al 40 min­utes, had 18 points, on three of six three-point­ers, while pow­er-foward Julius Ash­by, who al­so played 40 min­utes pro­duced 17 points and eight re­bounds of which came in the first half, for T&T.

T&T was set to play Cu­ba in the bronze medal match and for the fi­nal Cen­trobas­ket Tour­na­ment spot, last night, af­ter the lat­ter was stunned by Ja­maica in the first semi­fi­nal in over-time. Af­tr the scor­ers were lev­elled at 78-all Ja­maica outscored 11-6 in the five-minute over-time pe­ri­od to win 98-93. The win en­sured the British Vir­gin Is­lands their first Cen­trobas­ket Tour­na­ment birth, they were ex­pect­ed to play Jami­a­ca in the gold medal match last night as well.

Re­sult–Semi­fi­nals

T&T 73 ( Ian Cur­tis Young 18pts, Julius Ash­by 17pts) vs BVI 76 ( Kennedy Bass 17pts, Hal­stead Charles Chiver­ton 17pts)

Ja­maica 98 (Orit­sewey­in­mi Efe­juku net­ted 32pts) vs Cu­ba 93 (Ge­of­frei Sil­vestre 20pts)