Holy Childhood set to retain basketball title

Robert Bailey, Sunday Gleaner Writer

Defending champions Holy Childhood took a giant step towards retaining their Inter-Secondary Sports Association (ISSA) Southern Conference Under-19 Basketball title, when they whipped Vauxhall 51-37 in Game One of their-best-of-three finals Friday at the National Stadium Courts.

The first quarter was exciting as both teams traded basket for basket in the period, which led to a 9-9 score at the end of the stanza.

However, Vauxhall came out much more aggressive in the second period and stepped up their defence, which accounted for eight turnovers by Holy Childhood, in the process outscoring them (10-8) to take a 19-17 lead at half-time.

Holy Childhood's Tiffany Sparks scored eight straight points at the start of the third period, to push her team into a 25-21 lead with five minutes to go in the period, much to the delight of their cheering supporters, as Vauxhall failed to respond to their tight and aggressive defence.

Taking command

The Oneil Brown-coached Holy Childhood then went took command of the match from there on, as they went on to outscore their opponents (16-10) to take a 35-27 lead at the end of the period.

Vauxhall were dealt a major blow early in the fourth quarter when their top player and leading scorer, Latoyne Hudson, fouled out. Holy Childhood took advan-tage of this as they scored a number of easy baskets and, in the process, outscoring Vauxhall 16-10 to romp to an easy win. Sparks ended the match with a game-high 22 points and 21 rebounds.

She received support from Shanice Williams (12) and Tashet Scarlett (12). Hudson was the leading scorer for Vauxhall with 14 points.

Strategy

"My team is a third- and fourth-quarter team and so I had a game plan for Vauxhall because I studied them all season," said Brown. "I know that once we got rid of their number 15 (Latoyne Hudson), we would have won this game," he said.

Brown added: "My team is a defensive team and so we were not worried about the offence, and so anything Vauxhall come with in the second game we are confident and ready for it."

Latoya Deslandes, manager of Vauxhall, said she is confident her team can rebound in Game Two. "Our team started out very strong, but somewhere in the middle, I think anxiety got the better of the team.

She added: "We will be looking back at our performance today to see where we made the errors, and then we are going to fix those errors for Game Two on Monday."

Game Two in the series will be played tomorrow at the same venue.