– Stanton Rose named MVP

THE John Yates Trophy has returned to Guyana! Yates, in 1981, pioneered the Caribbean Basketball Championship, with the inaugural tournament hosted at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall.

Guyana had never won the title for the tournament which is now known as the Caribbean Basketball Confederation (CBC) Championship, until a team, led by an 18-year-old point guard from Kwakwani, Stanton Rose, invaded Suriname where the 2018 tournament was held, and won the trophy named after the man who fashioned the regional showpiece.

Playing undefeated through the group stage, Guyana demolished Barbados 81 – 75 in the semi-finals, before going on to rout Antigua and Barbuda 83 – 70 in a closely contested finals on Saturday night  to lift the trophy for the first time in 37 years.

While the women would’ve hoisted the title in 1996 when the tournament was hosted in Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana’s best placing came in 1994 when the event was hosted in Georgetown and saw the team losing to Jamaica in the finals.

The closest Guyana came to their 1994 feat was in 2000 when they finished third in Barbados. Spearheaded then by Lugard Mohan, they brushed aside Belize 87 – 67.

Rose was named Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the tournament for his sensational performances, which also include a tournament-high 41 points performance which came in Guyana’s 104 – 102 double overtime win against St Vincent and the Grenadines.

Rose, who totalled 106 points (third overall), led the tournament in steals, totalling 15 at an average of 2.5 per game, was third in points per game (17.7), third in assist per game, eighth in Rebounds per game and was the fourth best efficient player.

He will go down in history as the youngest (18-years old) to ever captain Guyana at the CBC Champion, and the first captain to bring Guyana their ‘elusive’ title.

British Virgin Island-based (BVI) shooting guard, Ray Victor, also had a good showing in Paramaribo, finishing as the team’s highest aggregate scorer (108 points) and averaged 18 points per game.

Victor’s best performance came against Suriname when he netted a game-high 28 points, and against Barbados, dropping another game-high scoring night with 24 points.

The former Warner University guard then teamed up with Rose to become a lethal back-court combination for coach Junior Hercules, as they progressed in the FIBA AmeriCup tournament.

Anthony Moe, the 6’9” forward came up big for Guyana in several games, having been forced to play the centre position because of Guyana’s lack of ‘big men’. Nonetheless, Moe finished with a 13-point average, and the team’s leading rebounder.

Meanwhile, Guyana, ranked 112 in the World by the game’s governing body FIBA, will move on along with Antigua and Barbuda, to the FIBA AmeriCup Qualifiers tournament which starts in September.