ST George’s College held off a late final-quarter burst from St Catherine High to win an exciting Game Two encounter 53-50, at the National Indoor Sports Centre (NISC) last Wednesday, and in the process levelled their best-of-three 2015-16 Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) Southern Basketball Conference Under-16 final at 1-1.

The winner was set to be decided in yesterday’s Game Three inside NISC.

Meanwhile, Game One in the Under-19 finals between defending champions Calabar High and Camperdown High played last Friday at Campion College was ruled null and void due to violation of ISSA guidelines.

It is said that both teams played without showing their identification cards to the officials. Calabar won the game 48-45, but Camperdown later lodged a protest.

The ISSA Disciplinary Committee decided Game One would be replayed and Camperdown turned the tables, winning 52-45 on Wednesday.

In the Under-16 game, St George’s Jordan Gillies scored 12 points and six rebounds, Nathan Reid with 12 points. For the losers, Owen Fraser scored 14 points and had seven rebounds, and Daniel Jones had 14 points including three three-pointers.

St George’s Clifford Brown was pleased with the display in the must-win encounter.

“Samera Williams did will in scoring some crucial free throws and that enable us to hold off the late surge of St Catherine,” he said.

Losing Coach Lennox Lindo said his team allowed St George’s to take a lead that proved insurmountable.

“St George’s played well and they were the better team that night and they deserved to win. The players seemed to have fallen asleep in the first three quarters as at one stage we were down by 14 points in the final quarter. We will be well prepared for St George’s in Game Three and hoping to clinch victory and the title,” Lindo said.

Meanwhile, Camperdown, who have been highly touted to win the Under-19 title, showed that they would not be easily beaten by the defending champions. They had Calabar on the run throughout the entire game.

Camperdown’s 52-45 win over Calabar saw Shaquille Allen scoring 14 points and pulling down eight rebounds. Morris Roberts had 11 points and five rebounds, while Leslie Cassell notched 10 points, eight rebounds and four steals. For the losers, Malick McCarthy had 15 points, 16 rebounds, six blocked shots and five assists.

Winning Coach Oneil Brown said his team learned from the mistakes made in the game that was ruled out.

“This time around we stood to the challenges, our defence did well and we maintained a good lead to come out winners.

“We know that Calabar will be coming hard at us to level the series, but our defence is expected to put up a good fight in holding them off. They are an experienced team and our defence will do the job,” Brown said.

Ludloo Barker of Calabar said Camperdown was the better team on the day, but was confident his players will rebound. “However, we still have two more games to play. We have to win Game Two first before thinking on the deciding Game Three.

“We will be taking Game 2 very seriously and we need to prevent them from taking a long lead as they did on Wednesday. We will be making a few adjustments in our game as we did not play Calabar’s usual pattern,” said Barker who is looking to level the series at one game apiece going into Game 3.