Ardenne retain U-19 crown, hunt U-16 title today
Ardenne High school retained the KFC/ISSA Under-19 Southern Conference schools basketball title after scoring a 55-48 win over St George’s College in game two of their best-of-three series final at the National Stadium courts yesterday.
However, both schools will have all to play for in the Under-16 final today at 4:00 pm after Ardenne levelled the series at 1-1 after winning earlier yesterday.
Ardenne’s coach Basil Barrett said coming into the games his only intention was to win.
“We especially had to win the juniors to survive and we won.. but it’s a good feeling winning back-to-back (senior) championships,” he said.
Dimitri Gage led the way for Ardenne with 18 points, followed by Mario Williams with nine points and seven rebounds and David Gardener with eight points.
St George’s Manning Cup star Kemar Cummings was St George’s topscorer with a game-high 19 points, with his best support coming from Stafano Leslie with eight points and seven rebounds.
Ardenne started positively in a closely-contested match and led 19-14 after the first interval.
After another close battle in the second quarter, Ardenne outscored their opponents 13-11 to hold a seven-point advantage (32-25) going in at half-time.
The third period provided very much the same story, with Ardenne winning the quarter 16-13 to increase their lead to 10 points (48-38) at the end of the quarter.
But after coming within two points of the leaders (48-50), St George’s wasted four attempts from the line, as well as an easy lay-up to get back on level terms.
St George’s coach Clifford Brown believed they wasted their best chance to win the game at the death.
“We had four free-throws where we could have tied the score, and then a basket that could have sent us ahead.”
In the junior game, Ardenne stopped their opponents thanks to 11 points and 10 rebounds from Warren Honeywell and eight points and five rebounds from Javon Davis.
St George’s Rasheed Andrews was the game’s topscorer with 15 points and 13 rebounds, while Shaun Graham gave good support with eight points and eight rebounds.
