MONTEGO BAY, St James

The winning Cornwall College teams will tomorrow be officially presented with their championship trophies after sweeping both titles in the Western Conference of the ISSA/KFC high school basketball competition.

Cornwall College beat Spot Valley High 2-0 in the Under-16 section and Mannings School 2-1 in the Under-19 section for the first sweep in four years and the first since Muschett achieved the feat in 2005.

The presentation will be preceded by an All-Star game between Cornwall’s Under -19 team against a collection of players from all the other schools, starting at 4:00 pm.

Cornwall will next lead the western challenge in the national play-offs which is set to get underway soon.

Spot Valley High and Muschett will take part in the Under-16 section while Mannings and Herbert Morrison will take part in the Under 19 section.

After being forced to a third game in the Under 19 section, Cornwall trounced Mannings by 33 points 85-52 at the Montego Bay Cricket Club on Wednesday.

Cornwall won the first game in the best of three series 77-70 but Mannings tied up the series with a 93-79 win in Game Two.

On Wednesday, Cornwall stepped up their defensive intensity restricting Mannings’ free scoring shooting guard Richard Chambers to 22 points after he had exploded for 59 points in the previous game, 40 points coming in the first half when he drained eight three-pointers.

Cornwall College’s coach Sheldon Pearson made several tactical changes including keeping starting forward Ricardo Greaves out of the game for the entire first quarter and the player responded with a sparkling game high 23 points effort.

Pearson also left power forward Jhaun Bryan on the bench for most of the first half but he ran into foul trouble, picking up his fourth midway the third quarter and only returned later when the game was decided but scored eight points, four from two big dunks, had seven blocked shots and nine rebounds.

Pearson said they had learned their lessons after Chambers’ outburst on Monday and “changed our strategy and made him work harder

for everything.”

Cornwall led by just three points 15-12 after the first quarter where both teams appeared nervous, creating a lot of turn-overs in front of a fair sized crowd that was on hand.

The Montego Bay school settled quickly in the second quarter especially with the insertion of Greaves as they outscored Mannings 28-12 and led by as many as 25 points midway the third period which they led 60-38 at the end.

Mannings managed to close the gap to 19 points early in the fourth quarter trailing 42-63 but with Jordan McPherson fouling out with 10 points, Cornwall went into overdrive and took the lead up to 28 points 78-50 before winning by 33 points as Peter Michael Reid sealed the win with a powerful two handed dunk with less than a minute to go.

Adolex Grant scored 21 points for Cornwall while Gavin Brown got 16 for the winners.