GSSBA: GT final four to battle today

The Guyana Secondary Schools Basketball Associa-tion will stage the two semifinal matches in the George-town conference today, starting at 11pm at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall.

In the first semifinal match, number two seed Central High will take on St. John’s College followed by the battle of the big guns when undefeated Cummings Lodge (C/Lodge) meet number four ranked Queen’s College (QC) in the featured game.

In the QC versus C/Lodge game, both teams have been known for putting up huge totals on the scoreboard throughout the regular season and while C/Lodge won the last time the two teams met, they plan to implement new features in their defence to shutdown QC. According to team captain Keon Hayles, C/Lodge will be utilizing a totally new defensive system which is aimed at limiting their opponents early. “The game against QC was real stiff for us and although we won, we had struggled on defence in the first half. Looking back at that game we decided to change the defence to make sure that they do not have a chance to come back as they did last time,” Hayles said. Another one of Cummings Lodge’s leading scorers, Colwin Nurse expressed confidence in his team in an interview with Stabroek Sport yesterday. “Our team has developed much more confidence since we finished the season undefeated and we hope to go all the way after we get past QC before we know that they have a very good team,” he said. The Cummings Lodge starting line-up will consist of shooting guard Keon Hayles (Captain) Bevon Spooner point guard who is currently playing on the junior national team in the Bryden’s 2nd division league, small forward Colwin Nurse, power forward Travis Williams and forward Anthony Quintin.

The C/Lodge players also said that they had been practicing every evening and hoped to overcome some problems of indiscipline from one of the players in their starting five.

QC has reportedly made efforts to have more depth in their bench since their players had pointed out fatigue as a major reason for the loss against C/Lodge in the second round. Stabroek Sport also learnt that they will be a few changes in the St. John’s College’s offence for the Cen-tral encounter.

Though there has been no word to determine exactly what those changes will be, Stabroek Sport understands that it will seek to improve the productivity from their guards who were shut down during their loss to Central in one of the final games of the second round of the season.