T&T con­clud­ed its FI­BA 3x3 Amer­iCup cam­paign in León, Mex­i­co, fin­ish­ing in 10th place over­all.

The lo­cal squad, com­prised of Chike Au­gus­tine, Ah­keem Boyd, Ah­keel Boyd, and Tyrik Singh, de­liv­ered a com­mend­able show­ing, high­light­ed by high­ly com­pet­i­tive per­for­mances against con­ti­nen­tal heavy­weights.

​T&T opened the main draw with a spir­it­ed Pool C bat­tle against World No 2 Cana­da on Fri­day, de­liv­er­ing one of their most com­posed and com­pet­i­tive per­for­mances of the tour­na­ment.

​The team start­ed with con­fi­dence, with Ah­keel set­ting the tone, scor­ing the game’s first three points for a 3-0 start. T&T re­fused to wilt against Cana­da’s re­sponse, with his twin broth­er Ah­keem and the rest of the team keep­ing the match with­in one pos­ses­sion for long stretch­es. In a key mo­ment, Ah­keel hit a long-range strike to cut the deficit to just two points, 18-16, at the 1:11 mark. T&T was firm­ly in con­tention, match­ing the glob­al pow­er­house pos­ses­sion for pos­ses­sion, but Cana­da’s depth and late free-throw op­por­tu­ni­ties al­lowed them to clinch the vic­to­ry, reach­ing the 21-point thresh­old with 51 sec­onds re­main­ing.

​T&T then pushed fifth-seed Ar­genti­na (World No 27) to the lim­it in their sec­ond Pool C show­down, hold­ing the lead for long stretch­es. T&T set the tone in­stant­ly as Ah­keem opened with a two-point­er as part of an ini­tial 4-0 run. They main­tained con­trol through con­fi­dent shot-mak­ing, with both Ah­keem and Ah­keel pun­ish­ing de­fen­sive gaps to keep the ad­van­tage. The piv­otal mo­ment came af­ter Ar­genti­na briefly tied the game 12-12, on­ly for T&T to hit back im­me­di­ate­ly through a clutch two-point­er from Ah­keem, restor­ing a 14-12 lead. How­ev­er, with the score tied at 17-17 and un­der two min­utes left, foul trou­ble proved cost­ly, hand­ing Ar­genti­na cru­cial free throws to take their first lead in the clos­ing phase, man­ag­ing to close out the con­test 21-17.

​De­spite the two loss­es, T&T’s per­for­mance un­der­scored their up­ward tra­jec­to­ry and their ca­pac­i­ty to push ma­jor bas­ket­ball na­tions deep in­to the fi­nal minute, lean­ing on the stand­out play of the Boyd broth­ers through­out the tour­na­ment.

Dur­ing Sun­day’s fi­nal, the Unit­ed States, the top team in the Amer­i­c­as, and sec­ond best team in the World to the Nether­lands, de­feat­ed Puer­to Ri­co in the fi­nal 21-15. The USA booked its place in the ti­tle match af­ter a 21-8 semi­fi­nal win against Brazil, while Puer­to Ri­co got past Cana­da 19-17.

For the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, Ja­maica end­ed the 15-team tour­na­ment in ninth place fol­lowed by T&T 10th, Guyana 11th, Cay­man Is­lands 12th, Haiti 13th, St Kitts & Nevis 14th and St Lu­cia 15th. The Ba­hamas for­feit­ed their match­es and was not ranked.

Mean­while, the USA de­feat­ed Cana­da in the fi­nal 21-19 to se­cure the women’s ti­tle from 11 chal­lengers in an un­beat­en five-game run. Ja­maica women is the high­est-ranked Caribbean team in 10th spot with the Cay­man Is­lands se­cur­ing the 12th and fi­nal po­si­tion.

Un­beat­en run in ​qual­i­fy­ing draw

​T&T start­ed the com­pe­ti­tion with im­me­di­ate in­tent in the qual­i­fy­ing draw, pow­er­ing to a 21-7 win over St Kitts and Nevis in a dom­i­nant, fast-paced en­counter.

​The lo­cal team struck first and, af­ter a brief 2-1 deficit, un­leashed a de­ci­sive scor­ing run led by Ah­keel, who caught fire with back-to-back two-point shots for a 5-2 ad­van­tage. Ah­keem soon joined the surge, drain­ing con­sec­u­tive two-point­ers to ex­tend the gap to 13-6. The mo­men­tum on­ly grew as Ah­keel con­tin­ued to pun­ish de­fen­sive laps­es with two more long-range con­ver­sions, bal­loon­ing the lead to 17-7. Singh sealed the com­mand­ing 21-7 vic­to­ry with the fi­nal two-point­er, trig­ger­ing the end-of-match ac­tion with over three min­utes re­main­ing.

​Trinidad and To­ba­go then sur­vived a late Uruguay surge to clinch a tense 21-18 vic­to­ry, seal­ing back-to-back wins in Thurs­day’s qual­i­fy­ing draw ac­tion.

​Uruguay start­ed strong, but T&T re­spond­ed quick­ly through Singh and steady shoot­ing from Ah­keem. Af­ter a tight­ly con­test­ed first half, the Boyd twins con­nect­ed from deep to fi­nal­ly tie the game 7-7. Singh then struck from long range to give T&T their first lead, 10-9.

Mo­men­tum swung firm­ly to­ward T&T as Ah­keem de­liv­ered back-to-back dag­gers from long range, stretch­ing the ad­van­tage to 17-10. Uruguay re­fused to fold, trim­ming the deficit all the way to 19-18 with just four sec­onds left. But in the game’s de­ci­sive mo­ment, Uruguay com­mit­ted con­sec­u­tive fouls, award­ing two cru­cial free throws. Ah­keel Boyd stepped up and calm­ly sank both at­tempts with three sec­onds re­main­ing, clos­ing out a clutch 21-18 win for T&T.

​A com­posed fin­ish, sharp shoot­ing, and time­ly de­fence en­sured T&T emerged un­beat­en in the qual­i­fy­ing draw, se­cur­ing their spot in the main phase of the tour­na­ment.