ARDENNE High and St George’s College will contest both ISSA Under-19 and Under-16 Southern Conference best-of-three schools basketball finals set to get under way tomorrow following semi-final victories at the National Stadium Courts yesterday.

Ardenne turned back Calabar High, 52-48, to book their place in the Senior final, where St George’s await.

In the Juniors, St George’s scored a narrow 50-49 victory against Campion College to join Ardenne in that decider.

In the Senior match-up, Mario Williams led the way for the Ardenne Road boys with an impressive 28 points and 12 rebounds. He received good support from Dimitri Gage, who bagged 10 points and 13 steals.

Kavin Carty was Calabar’s topscorer with 12 points, followed by Vashil Hernandez with 10 points and 14 rebounds.

Favourites Ardenne started confidently and easily pushed into a 11-7 lead after the first break.

The Basil Barrett-coached side continued where they left off in the second quarter and increased their advantage to nine (30-19) at half-time.

But Calabar dramatically turned the game around in the third period, as they limited their opponents to just six points while scoring 14 in the process to trail by three (36-33) entering the final quarter.

The Ludlow Barker-coached Calabar eventually drew level (44-44) with over five minutes to play and went ahead on a three-pointer.

Ardenne, however, showed their resilience by rallying with a basket and a three-pointer of their own and never looked back after regaining the lead.

Ardenne’s coach Barrett said both teams had good runs during the game, but his team’s change of defence paved the way for their victory.

“We switched the defence to man-to-man, and it paid off,” Barrett confirmed.

Earlier in the Under-16 match, Javed Hibib with a game-high 24 points and 12 rebounds and Shavene Francis with 10 points propelled St George’s to a nail-biting win over surprise package Campion College.

Jonathan Mitchell was the topscorer for Campion with 17 points. Chad Wilson gave good support with 12 points, while Martin Vaughn chipped in with 14 rebounds and eight points.

The ‘Light Blues’ edged into a 14-11 lead after the first period and led 24-15 at half-time, but a determined third quarter from Campion saw them cutting the deficit to two (32-30) for the last quarter.

And despite taking the final stanza, 19-18, it was not enough as they missed out by just one point.

Games One of the finals begin with the Under-16 game at 3:00 pm tomorrow, with the Senior decider set to start at 5:00 pm.