Jamaica beat Caribbean neighbours Aruba 81-59 in the classification section of the FIBA Centrobasket U17 Championship at the Instituto del Deporte y la Cultura Fisica in Mexicali, Mexico, yesterday after they were knocked out of semi-final contention a night earlier losing to the Dominican Republic.

Jamaica will play a second game today against the winner of another classification game yesterday between Panama and El Salvador to decide who finish between 5th and 8th places in the five-day event.

The young Jamaicans were beaten on Friday night 67-103 by the Dominican Republic in their third Group B game and were eliminated from semi-final contention.

It was Jamaica’s second loss in three first round of games after going down in their opening contest to hosts and defending champions Mexico on Wednesday but had a win over El Salvador 95-78 on Thursday.

Mexico topped Jamaica’s group and will advance along with the Dominican Republic to the semi-finals also on Saturday while Costa Rica and Puerto Rico advanced from Group A.

The top three teams will qualify for the FIBA Under-18 Americas championships in 2022.

Trevor Poyser, the head coach of the Jamaican team, said while the group losses knocked them out of medal contention “and the possibility of qualifying for the next tournament”, the team had done admirably well.

“I’m good with the improvements they’ve made since training camp started,” he told the Jamaica Observer yesterday. “After a stage fright performance in game one with 43 turnovers, they reduced the number in following two games and gave a much better showing.”

Yesterday, after being tied 12-all at the end of the first quarter with Aruba, Jamaica outscored them 69-47 as London Johnson scored 29 points and nine rebounds and Marcus McDonald scored 28 points for Jamaica.

Friday night, Jamaica’s London Johnson failed to score 40 points in his third-straight game but only just, scoring a game-high 37 in just over 35 minutes and sitting out the last stages of the game.

The Georgia-based player had 11-17 shooting and missed just one of his 17 free throws with Flawless Travers being the only other player to score in double digits with 10 points including two three-pointers and Corey DaCosta had eight points off the bench.

— Paul Reid