– Colts, Bulls advance
– to quarter-finals

LAST year’s losing finalist Colts began their “road to redemption” with a 80 – 45 points blow-out over Linden’s Block 22 Flames when the Guyana Amateur Basketball Federation (GABF) National Club Championship got on the way on Friday evening at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall.In the second game of the night, an all-Linden affair saw the Mining Town’s number seed Half Mile Bulls, defeating Amelia’s Ward Jets 81 – 61.

By far, the most entertaining of the two matches played on opening night, the Bulls versus Jets game lived up to all the hype.

Terron Welch carried his side’s scoring and was dominant throughout the game, first leading the Bulls to a one-point game at the end of the first quarter (15 – 14).

Welch, who ended the night with a game-high 39 points helped the Bulls to outscore the Jets 20 – 15 in the second quarter, and closed the half leading 35 – 29.

The Jets, with a better front court than the Bulls, rallied behind their “bigs” Javon Nelson (19 points), Joel (15) and Alister Webster (12 points, nine rebounds), to score 19 points in the third stanza; two more than their counterparts, but still trailed 52 – 48.

The final period belonged to the Bulls with Welch going on a rampage and was virtually unstoppable in the back court for the Jets.

Defensively, the Bulls were just as good, as they were offensively in the fourth quarter as they went to on to outscore the Jets 29 – 18.

The opening game was a one-sided contest. Block 22 Flames put up no resistance to Colts, with the exception of the first period when they only tailed behind 17 – 19.

However, being outscored 3 – 22 in the second period, the Linden team found themselves falling in an impossible position to come back, going into the second half 41 – 20.

National Junior point guard Stanton Rose, who led all scorers with 19 points on the night, helped the Colts to finish 58 – 35 to end the third quarter and finally closing the game with a 22 – 10 blitz in the fourth quarter.

(Rawle Toney)