{"id":2555,"date":"2019-07-17T21:29:57","date_gmt":"2019-07-17T21:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/westernmirror.com\/?p=2555"},"modified":"2019-07-17T21:29:59","modified_gmt":"2019-07-17T21:29:59","slug":"knights-stunned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/?p=2555","title":{"rendered":"Knights stunned"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Noelita Lawrence-Ricketts<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

MoBay Boys\u2019 Club Warriors and Falmouth Saints hold vital 1-0 leads in their best-of-three semi-final series of the Western Basketball Association (WBA) Elite League, following contrasting victories on Saturday, July 13, at the Montego Bay Cricket Club.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Warriors rallied in spectacular fashion to pip MoBay Cricket\nClub Knights by the narrowest of margins, 73-72, while Saints were in\ndestructive form, brushing aside the former many times champions Granville\nJaguars, 84-60.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knights entered the contest as slight favourites and started\nwell, quickly establishing a five-point advantage after the close of the first\nquarter, 22-17.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knights then fell asleep somewhat in the second quarter,\nallowing a spirited Warriors back into the game as they cut the lead to a mere\nfour going into the end of the first half.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Warriors carried the momentum into the start of the third\nquarter, chipping further into the Knights\u2019 lead, trimming their advantage to a\nsingle point going into the start of the fourth and final quarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though missing several wide open looks at the basket and six\nstraight free throws, Warriors managed to keep pace with their more fancied\nopponents late in the quarter, with Tafari Vassell making a big play, a\ndecisive lay-up on a fast break by Le\u2019var Rose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Warriors leveled the scores at 70-70 late in the quarter,\nbefore going on to snatch the win after youg Anthony Thorpe connected on two\nfree throws.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Antonio Spence, with 23points and 10 rebounds, led the way\nfor the Knights, while Jhuan Bryan added 14 and hauled down 11 rebounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the Warriors, Tafari Vassell and Rose had 29 and 19\npoints respectively, with Vassell also grabbing 14 rebounds and effecting 5\nsteals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SAINTS MERCILESS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the feature match-up of the evening, not much was\nexpected from the weakened Jaguars team without Dave Black and David Gordon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That expectation lived up to as Saints were emphatic from\nthe first attack, hammering home a dunk on the very first attack of the basket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jaguars, visibly lacking in fire power and a presence down\nlow, struggled throughout as Saints, lethal in attack and stifling in defense,\nkept them at bay in the at times lopsided match-up which had the eventual\nwinners ahead 49-37 at the halftime break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jaguars trailed by as many as 15 with only three players,\nveterans, managing to get into double figures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leroy Lawrence, who has played sparingly this season and who\nholds the League\u2019s record for most double-doubles, was the go-to man for the Jaguars\nas he ended with 21 points and 15 rebounds, and was supported by Cleon Morgan,\n19, and Ryan Harrison, 11 and 6 rebounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Six of Harrison\u2019s points came in the first quarter alone as\nJaguars made an early attempt to make a contest of the encounter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the winners, Alex Levy had 24 points and Earldom Smith\nadded 20 and grabbed 7 rebounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three other players also got into double digit scoring,\nAldane Anderson, Ricardo Brooks and Nicholai Brown with 14, 12 and 10\nrespectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brooks also grabbed 11 rebounds and dished 6 assists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Noelita Lawrence-Ricketts MoBay Boys\u2019 Club Warriors and Falmouth Saints hold vital 1-0 leads in their best-of-three semi-final series of the Western Basketball Association (WBA) Elite League, following contrasting victories on Saturday, July 13, at the Montego Bay Cricket Club. Warriors rallied in spectacular fashion to pip MoBay Cricket Club Knights by the narrowest of margins, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[68,1400,682,801,30,754],"class_list":["post-2555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-basketball","tag-granville-jaguars","tag-knights","tag-western-basketball-association","tag-western-jamaica","tag-western-sports"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2557,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2555\/revisions\/2557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}