RACHAEL THOMP­SON-KING

News­gath­er­ing Ed­i­tor -Sport

rachael.king@guardian.co.tt

Strak­er Nets and Spar­tans TT are the cham­pi­ons of the 2024 North Zone In­vi­ta­tion­al Tour­na­ment.

On Fri­day night at the St Paul’s Street Mul­ti­pur­pose Fa­cil­i­ty, the teams won their re­spec­tive game three fi­nal match­es, Strak­er in the Men’s First Di­vi­sion and Spar­tans in the Un­der-17 Di­vi­sion, to reign in the Re­vival In­vi­ta­tion­al League pow­ered by the Port-of-Spain De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed.

In the de­cid­ing match of the Open Men’s Di­vi­sion best-in-three se­ries fi­nal, re­li­able Sadi­ki Guer­ra again led Strak­er Nets of­fen­sive­ly to see off Po­lice, 71-57, af­ter the lat­ter lev­elled the se­ries the pre­vi­ous Sun­day, win­ning game two, 90-82. This fol­lowed, Strak­er draw­ing first blood with a 63-52, two days ear­li­er.

Guer­ra, who was lat­er named the “Most Valu­able Play­er” (MVP), for the fourth straight match led the scor­ing for the win­ner with 20 points but it was Tris­ton Ben­jamin get­ting Strak­er Nets’ of­fence off, net­ting the first nine points as their team con­trolled the first quar­ter, 17-14.

How­ev­er, the po­lice­men ral­lied back thanks to the ef­fort of Mika­hail Williams, who scored eight of his 10 points in the pe­ri­od to put his unit ahead, 37-30 at half­time.

On the re­sump­tion though, Guer­ra seized con­trol as he poured in eight of his 20 points to spark Strak­er’s come­back which saw the Bar­ry Stew­art-coached team, outscor­ing its op­po­nent, 23-8, its best scor­ing pe­ri­od, to lead 53-45 at end of the third quar­ter.

But Po­lice did not re­treat and fought hard to get back in­to the game in the fourth quar­ter, spurred on by Kern Alex­is (15), Fab­rice Fish­er (10) and Dex­troy Man­swell (11) but there was no stop­ping lead­ing scor­er, Guer­ra. He part­nered with Ha­keem Mor­gan to pro­duce 16 of the 18 points scored in the fi­nal pe­ri­od to give Strak­er Nets, the com­fort­able 14-point win to take the se­ries, 2-1, for the “Re­vival” Open men’s ti­tle.

De­fence Force took third place af­ter Cale­do­nia Clip­pers failed to show for the play­off match, the pre­vi­ous week­end.

Ear­li­er in the U-17 de­cider, Roy­al­ty gave up leads in the first two quar­ters to go un­der, 80-77. Spar­tans had to win two straight match­es to com­plete the best-in-three se­ries win and that is what they did af­ter los­ing game one, 91-82. Spar­tans, led by the even­tu­al MVP of the di­vi­sion William Fran­cis with 26, bounced back to take the sec­ond match eas­i­ly, 110-66.

In the fi­nal match-up, duo Ja­son Best (21) and Chris­tain Gillineau (20), had Spar­tans, coached by Mor­gan “Axe” Shade trail­ing 19-17 in the first quar­ter and 39-33 at half­time de­spite the con­tri­bu­tion of Ke­vani Boatswain who hit eight of his 12 points in the sec­ond quar­ter.

Then Fran­cis, who was again key in Spar­tans’ win, with a match-high 27 points, took over the of­fence, hit­ting two three-point­ers to open third quar­ter to pull his team clos­er un­til they lev­elled the scores at 52, head­ing in­to the fourth quar­ter.

Fran­cis con­tin­ued where he left off in­to the de­cid­ing ses­sion, con­nect­ing two free throws and then Idri­is Mar­tin with good sup­port from Adri­an Thomas (11) got Spar­tans over the line to take the win and se­cure the U-17 Di­vi­sion se­ries, 2-1.

Ba­sic Bas­ket­ball Acad­e­my fin­ished third in the di­vi­sion af­ter a con­vinc­ing 85-22 win over 500 Hawks in the play­off last week­end.