TRENTS is quickly becoming schools’ basketball next title town.
Oh, how times have changed!
One year after bringing home their first title, St Lucy were back at it again this week, capping a second successive perfect season via Friday’s 69-43 beat-down of St Leonard’s in the United Insurance Division 2 regular season finale at Trents.
It’s the second time in as many years St Lucy (14-0) hosted a battle to decide the league’s best team, following last year’s near identical 69-46 victory over then defending champs Garrison.
This after the men from Trents spent the better part of two decades in basketball’s wilderness.
But the champs are chumps no more.
Just ask St Leonard’s (12-2), who watched their anticipated clash of the titans turn into a silence of the lambs after the hosts blew open the contest through a 28-11 second-half run.
And Jerome Small proved every bit as incisive as Hannibal Lecter, scoring 11 of his 21 points in the third quarter to ignite the surge, turning a 27-22 half-time lead into a 53-33 blowout by the onset of the fourth.
At one point the seasoned combo guard accounted for seven successive points and ten of his team’s final 12 in the third, duly finishing the period with a buzzer-beating floater while getting fouled.
It came directly following a period where Small beat down his markers to the floor for two straight coast-to-coast lay-ups, the first of which resulted in Tevin Gilkes’ disqualification.
He wasn’t the only forward to leave the game early.
Key big man Nicholas Rouse lasted just 6:13 into the third quarter before fouling out, as Jamario Clarke wasted no time in attacking the foul-prone forward after St Leonard’s gambled by leaving him in the game.
But Clarke also proved a handful for the rest of the visitors’ smaller front court, pouring in nine points in the period to combine with Small in accounting for all of St Lucy’s third-quarter scoring.
Gilkes followed Rouse’s lead just three minutes later and the writing was on the wall when Small’s floater put St Lucy up 47-30.
St Leonard’s only got as close as 14 points the rest of the way (55-41) after Ramone Lorde and Rashad Parris had successive three-point plays to spark a fleeting 8-0 rally.
Clarke led all scorers with 27 points while Bynoe chipped in with ten. For St Leonard’s, Gilkes topscored with 12 and
