T&T quar­tet twin broth­ers Ah­keel and Ah­keem Boyd, Chike Au­gus­tine, and Mori­ba De Fre­itas pulled off an­oth­er up­set to book their spot in to­day’s semi­fi­nals of the men’s 3x3 bas­ket­ball com­pe­ti­tion at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in San­ti­a­go, Chile.

The lo­cal team put on a dom­i­nat­ing per­for­mance to beat 35th-ranked Brazil, 20-19, in the quar­ter­fi­nals at the Span­ish Sta­di­um in the Las Con­des re­gion on Sun­day.

Ah­keel led T&T’s scor­ing once again with 11 points, con­nect­ing two bas­kets from be­yond the three-point arc which is worth two points.

It was a com­plete team ef­fort as post play­ers Au­gus­tine and De Fre­itas re­bound­ed and put back-up shots when called up­on and Ah­keem gave great sup­port both on of­fense and de­fence for the team coached by Christo­pher Jack­son Charles, a for­mer se­nior women’s coach.

Brazil net­ted the first bas­ket and it was the on­ly time T&T trailed in the clash.

The lo­cal team went on to take a 3-1 lead which they pushed to 9-5 at the first break. They went up as much as 12-6 un­til the Brazil­ians start­ed to work their way back in­to the game and at the sec­ond break in the 10-minute match, they were be­hind by five (13-8). Every time they got clos­er, T&T in­ter­vened. At the third break, T&T still held the five-point (15-10) ad­van­tage.

The Brazil­ians though were not go­ing away and start­ed to chip away T&T’s lead to come with­in two (18-16) when the De Fre­itas was called for an un­sports­man­like foul, send­ing Jef­fer­son Froehlich to the line for two free throws with 55.9 sec­onds re­main­ing in the match, but shock­ing­ly he missed both at­tempts.

Mo­ments lat­er, De Fre­itas was fouled go­ing up for a put-back dunk and he was on tar­get from the free throw line, to give T&T a 19-7 lead with 28.6 on the clock. Ah­keel fol­lowed up with a run­ner to put his team fur­ther ahead 20-17.

Froech­lich got the ball quick­ly af­ter the shot and raced over the three-point arc and con­nect­ed a shot as the buzzer sound­ed while de­fend­ed by Ah­keel. The two points were count­ed as he fell over look­ing for a foul call but the ref­er­ee blew the whis­tle to sig­nal the end of the game, send­ing the T&T bas­ket­ballers in­to cel­e­bra­tions.

The 82nd-ranked T&T team will be aim­ing to pull off yet an­oth­er up­set to­day when it faces sec­ond-ranked USA in the semi­fi­nals seek­ing to ce­ment a spot in the fi­nal lat­er to­day.

On Sat­ur­day, the T&T men’s team sealed a huge up­set vic­to­ry Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, 22-15, in their open­ing Group B match but lat­er suf­fered a 21-6 de­feat to Puer­to Ri­co, the reign­ing Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) gold medal­list in its sec­ond match and the ner­vous wait to see whether they would progress. Thank­ful­ly, the Puer­to Ri­cans re­turned on the sec­ond day of ac­tion to beat and elim­i­nate the cur­rent CAC bronze medal­list Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, 21-14 which meant that T&T fin­ished sec­ond in Group B and ad­vanced to the quar­ter­fi­nals.

<Box­ers Guy, Prince bow out 5-0>

Light wel­ter­weight box­er Tian­na Guy bowed out of San­ti­a­go 2023 af­ter los­ing her women’s 60kg pre­lim­i­nary round of 16 bout yes­ter­day.

The 26-year-old lost 5-0 (26-30, 27-30, 27-30, 26-30, 27-30) to Colom­bian Ang­ie Valdes, the sil­ver medal­list at the World Am­a­teur Box­ing Cham­pi­onships, when the fa­mil­iar foes met at the Olympic Train­ing Cen­tre.

“My per­for­mance was good. Of course, tac­ti­cal mis­takes but it was against a re­al­ly good op­po­nent so she didn’t al­low too many mis­takes to es­cape but over­all I think a sol­id per­for­mance. My first Pan Amer­i­can Games against the sec­ond-best in the world,” said Guy, who sparred against Valdes dur­ing the na­tion­al team’s train­ing camp in Colom­bia ahead of San­ti­a­go 2023.

They opened the first round, feel­ing out each oth­er so much so that the crowd gath­ered got a bit rest­less and start­ed to clap to pro­pel ei­ther box­er to throw the first punch. When Valdes did fi­nal­ly it evoked ap­plause. The Colom­bian con­tin­ued to at­tack but Guy did a good job of block­ing or evad­ing her punch­es. How­ev­er, it was Valdes tak­ing the first round with a per­fect 10. So too in the sec­ond round as it was much of the same with Valdes hold­ing the edge.

Far more con­tact came in the third and fi­nal round, as the Colom­bian fight­er land­ed clean com­bi­na­tions and used her range to con­nect with long right hands, to again score a per­fect 10 and move on to Wednes­day’s quar­ter­fi­nals.

“I think de­fen­sive-wise if you all saw she was swing­ing for the hills a lot and if I didn’t have prop­er de­fence, I would have got­ten caught way more than I did,” said Guy and the mis­takes she made, “I think when she swings, I didn’t counter enough ei­ther I was out of po­si­tion or too close so I had a lit­tle prob­lem find­ing my dis­tance I would say but over­all I still think a sol­id per­for­mance.”

Guy is ready to use yes­ter­day’s loss as a step­ping stone as she keeps her eye on qual­i­fy­ing for the Paris Olympic Games in France, next year.

“The Olympics jour­ney con­tin­ues. We have two World Qual­i­fiers com­ing up so it is to keep work­ing, and keep fix­ing mis­takes. That’s the thing about am­a­teur box­ing we don’t have a down pe­ri­od, it’s al­ways go­ing, and it is al­ways fix­ing mis­takes be­cause what makes am­a­teurs dif­fer­ent from pros is we don’t know who we are fight­ing so we can’t pre­pare a game plan all we could do is fix out mis­takes and ad­just on the go.”

Aaron Prince al­so lost his men’s pre­lim­i­nary round of 16 71kg di­vi­sion bout ver­sus Ju­nior Pe­ka Petan­qui of Cana­da, 5-0. The judges’ score­card read 27-30, 27-30, 28-29, 27-30 in favour of the Cana­di­an.

<De Bou­blet comes up short against So­tomay­or>

T&T’s bad­minton play­er Cheque­da De Boulet’s hope of claim­ing a medal at San­ti­a­go 2023 was dashed yes­ter­day as well.

She lost in straight sets to Nik­te So­tomay­or of the In­de­pen­dent Ath­letes Team, 21-9, 21-18 in their round of 16 match in the women’s sin­gles com­pe­ti­tion al­so at the Olympic Train­ing Cen­tre.

De Boulet strug­gled against So­tomay­or’s pace in the first game, los­ing 21-9. She re­cov­ered ini­tial­ly in the sec­ond game, tak­ing a 13-10 lead then scored three more unan­swered points to hold a 16-10 ad­van­tage. How­ev­er, So­tomay­or went on a run of her own and tied the scores at 18 be­fore pulling away to win the game by three points.

De Boulet had ad­just­ed her game to fit her op­po­nent’s.

“I guess I was kind of over­whelmed by her pace and pow­er in her shots so the sec­ond set was try­ing to slow down to play at my pace which I think was kind of too slow for her Yeah but in the end I kind of ran out of pa­tience in the lat­ter points,” said T&T’s lead­ing bad­minton play­er, who learned from the ex­pe­ri­ence.

“If I start well off the blocks I can com­pete with these play­ers be­cause last Pan Am Games she was the bronze medal­list But it’s more about try­ing to sharp­en up my tech­nique and work­ing on my pace and speed as well so that I don’t al­ways have to slow down the game cause it is en­er­gy sap­ping.”

She lat­er part­nered with Marc Re­ece Mar­cano in the mixed dou­bles com­pe­ti­tion against Alon­so Medel and Va­nia Di­az of the host coun­try in the fi­nal match of the day.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, De Boulet suf­fered her sec­ond loss of the day’s pro­gramme, when a fight­ing T&T duo went un­der in straight sets, 21-15, 21-18 in their round of 16 match.

Mar­cano was elim­i­nat­ed on Sat­ur­day in the men’s sin­gles com­pe­ti­tion by Adri­ano Viale, 2-0.

<Black­man, Wil­son miss out medal round ac­tion>

Nei­ther Nikoli Black­man nor Zarek Wil­son made it to the medal round in their re­spec­tive events in the swim­ming com­pe­ti­tion at the Aquat­ic Cen­tre, yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Black­man was up first for T&T in the men’s 200 me­tres freestyle event. Swim­ming in lane two, he post­ed a time of one minute and 51.88 sec­onds to place fifth in the third and fi­nal pre­lim­i­nary heat and 13th over­all among the 24 com­peti­tors. On­ly the top eight swim­mers ad­vance to the fi­nal.

Wil­son, com­pet­ing in the men’s 100m but­ter­fly out of lane two, touched the wall fourth with 54.74 sec­onds in heat two of four to be 14th over­all out of 29 swim­mers.

They were hop­ing for re­demp­tion in the B Fi­nal lat­er in the af­ter­noon and Black­man al­most achieved it, lead­ing the field at the 100m mark but he went out too hard ear­ly and fad­ed to fourth, clock­ing 1:52.92 while Wil­son was sixth in 54.61.

Both T&T swim­mers will be back in wa­ter to­day at the Aquat­ic Cen­tre with Black­man com­pet­ing in the sec­ond of three events, the 100m freestyle, and Wil­son in the 100m back­stroke. To­mor­row, Black­man is set to com­pete in the 50m freestyle while Cherelle Thomp­son tack­les the women’s ver­sion of the race.