Dar­i­on Sparks and Josie Ce­de­no put on a show at the South­ern Re­gion­al In­door Sports Are­na in Pleas­antville, San Fer­nan­do, on Sat­ur­day night, pow­er­ing the Bronx Bull­dogs to an em­phat­ic 84-59 vic­to­ry over Point Fortin Vet­er­ans Bas­ket­ball Acad­e­my (PFVB­BA) in game one of the South Zone Bas­ket­ball League Boys’ Un­der-17 “Big Four” semi­fi­nal se­ries.

​From the open­ing tip, the Bull­dogs’ back­court duo proved im­pos­si­ble to con­tain, con­trol­ling the match and break­ing down the PFVB­BA de­fence at will. Sparks led all scor­ers with a match-high 27 points, with both him and Ce­de­no pen­e­trat­ing the lane and fin­ish­ing con­sis­tent­ly, as well as com­bin­ing to pro­vide lethal perime­ter play. Ce­de­no poured in 23. To­geth­er, the pair ac­count­ed for 50 of their team’s 84 points, set­ting the tone for a dom­i­nant team per­for­mance.

Bull­dogs wast­ed no time as­sert­ing con­trol, jump­ing out to a 34-17 lead by the end of the first quar­ter be­hind an ear­ly scor­ing flur­ry from Sparks and Ce­de­no. PFVB­BA strug­gled to slow the pace or clean up their de­fen­sive glass, al­low­ing Bronx to ex­tend their ad­van­tage to 52-28 by the half­time in­ter­val.

​The mo­men­tum re­mained firm­ly with the Bull­dogs af­ter the break, as they outscored PFVB­BA once again to build a com­mand­ing 73-46 lead head­ing in­to the fi­nal pe­ri­od. Liam Munroe fought hard to lead the re­sponse for PFVB­BA with 14 points, sup­port­ed by Aidan Fe­lix’s 12, but the ear­ly moun­tain proved too steep to climb. With the win, Bronx take a 1-0 lead in the best-in-three se­ries and sit just one vic­to­ry away from a berth in the cham­pi­onship fi­nal.

Game two­be­tween PFVB­BA and Bronx is set for Sat­ur­day at 8 pm.

​En­ter­prise cruise in Girls’ U-19 open­er

​The night’s sec­ond match pro­duced an­oth­er de­ci­sive re­sult, as Club En­ter­prise over­whelmed the Bronx Bull­dogs 83-35 in their Girls’ U-19 Di­vi­sion clash.

​En­ter­prise was re­lent­less on de­fence from the open­ing whis­tle, suf­fo­cat­ing the Bull­dogs’ at­tack while ex­e­cut­ing flaw­less­ly on the break to open up a 28-8 cush­ion af­ter the first pe­ri­od. En­ter­prise’s bal­anced scor­ing at­tack was led by Kadence Hoyte, who racked up 21 points. Kaylee Haynes added 16 points, Cayana Sel­l­i­er con­tributed 13, and Li Mob­hair chipped in with nine points to keep the of­fence click­ing.

​En­ter­prise in­creased their lead to 48-20 at half­time and pushed the ad­van­tage to 67-24 by the end of the third quar­ter. De­spite the de­feat, Bronx Bull­dogs’ Ame­na Philbert turned in an out­stand­ing in­di­vid­ual ef­fort, car­ry­ing her side’s of­fen­sive load by scor­ing a match-high 22 of her team’s 35 to­tal points.

Game one in the oth­er Girls’ U-19 semi­fi­nal be­tween South Stars and EBA will take place on Sat­ur­day at 6.30 pm.

​At­ten­tion now shifts di­rect­ly to tonight’s mar­quee matchup in the Men’s U-23 Di­vi­sion fi­nal, where ri­vals South­side Elite and Quar­ters clash at 8.30 pm in game one of their cham­pi­onship se­ries fol­low­ing the third place play­off be­tween Club En­ter­prise and Bronx at 7 pm.

​Sat­ur­day’s re­sults

Boys’ U-17 Di­vi­sion

​Bronx Bull­dogs 84 (Dar­i­on Sparks 27, Josie Ce­de­no 23) vs PFVB­BA 59 (Liam Munroe 14, Aidan Fe­lix 12). Quar­ters: 1st 34-17, 2nd 52-28, 3rd 73-46 (All in favour of Bronx).

Girls U-19 Di­vi­sion

Bronx Bull­dogs 35 (Ame­na Philbert 22) vs Club En­ter­prise 83 (Kadence Hoyte 21, Kaylee Haynes 16, Cayana Sel­l­i­er 13, Li Mob­hair 9) . Quar­ters: 1st 28-8, 2nd 48-20, 3rd 67-24 (All in favour of En­ter­prise).

Match­es

To­day

Mens U-23 Di­vi­sion

3rd/4th Place Play­off: Club En­ter­prise vs Bronx, 7 pm

Fi­nals (Game 1): Elite vs Quar­ters, 8.30 pm

​Oc­to­ber 3 Semi­fi­nals

Girls U-19 Di­vi­sion (Game 1): South Stars vs EBA, 6.30 pm

Boys U-17 Di­vi­sion (Game 2): PFVB­BA vs Bronx, 8 pm