Mackeson National Super Ward Basketball Championship …
THE undefeated Charlestown/Albouystown team will come up against Christianburg tonight in the second semi-final of the GABA Mackeson National Super Ward basketball Championship tonight at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall. Already advancing to the final are Central Mackenzie by virtue of defeating last year’s inter-ward champions North Ruimveldt 56-46 last Sunday and tonight’s clash should be interesting since an all-Linden final could be brewing.
Christianburg picked up their only loss in the tournament against North Ruimveldt last week to finish second in Group ‘A’ of the championship while the crowd-favourites Charlestown/Albouystown have shown that they certainly are the team to beat.
Their ‘Fab-5’ players – Dwayne ‘Brown Sugar’ Roberts, Akeem ‘The Dream’ Kanhai, Kevin ‘Two Feet’ Joseph, Rodwell ‘Kobe’ Fortune and Niko Fraser, have been the pillars of their team’s offensive and defensive line throughout the competition and no team have yet shown that they can be stopped.
Roberts has recorded three double-doubles in his four games while Fraser snatched over ten rebounds in every match played.
Kanhai started well with back-to-back games scoring over 20 points but has since rounded his game more and is even a bit more dangerous now while Joseph is keeping to his reputation of being the tournament’s most dangerous point guard because he can switch on and off in offensive mode while still being unselfish.
Fortune has earned the nickname ‘The little big man’ because at just over five foot tall, he gets just as much rebounds as any big player in the middle because of his extraordinary leaping ability. With the ball, he uses his ‘ups’ well to hit jumpers over his always bigger opponents.
But while many may want to call it in favour of the city ward, it would be a sin to ignore the competitiveness of the Christianburg team and their usual collective team efforts which make up for their not-so-deep bench.
National centre Nkossi Gurrick has been like a beast in the paint so far and is yet to put on hold. Though Gurrick is not much of an offensive threat, Christianburg utilise his extreme good vision on the court to flow their offence through him.
Also Christianburg rely heavily on their garbage Quincy ‘Prog-z’ Jones and guards Trevor Profit and Nevin Grenville. The said players have scored over 85% of their team’s total so far in the tournament with the bench not contributing much and it was seen as clear as day against North Ruimveldt in the preliminaries.
Clearly everyone would agree that Charlestown are unarguably the strongest team in the tournament and their chances of winning are high but the game of basketball can be unpredictable and the winner of the game would be whichever team turns up  on the said night especially with $500 000 up for grabs for the champions of the tournament.