The Peter Alleyne comeback watch is officially on – again.
If Warrens needed reasons to convince their star guard to come out of another retirement, they couldn’t have found 31 better ones after Cougars handed basketball’s defending Premier League champs a humiliating 84-53 whipping on Thursday at the Wildey Gym.
It was the first loss in this young season for the rebuilding Warrens (1-1), who’ve started a second successive year with the news of the 36-year-old Alleyne’s retirement from the top flight.
But the former MVP never made good on that initial promise to walk away from the game, with last year’s hiatus lasting all of two games before Alleyne was forced back into action following a lacklustre loss to Cougars.
Oh, how history just has a way of repeating itself. If last season’s defeat could be described as disheartening, then this was simply demoralizing, as Cougars (2-0) led by as many as 38 points after exploding to an unthinkable 47-16 first-half blowout.
And Alleyne had a front-row seat for the horror, just as he did last year, sitting on the bench in his role as assistant coach while his players merely lay down against Cougars’ furious transition attack.
Warrens didn’t even bother to put up a fight to start the contest while going scoreless for the first five minutes in an effort that saw them fall into a quick 18-6 hole.
So bad was the performance that Warrens had more turnovers (19) than points (16) in the first half, with each gaffe seemingly leading to uncontested fast break layups for Godfrey Leacock and Adrian Stewart.
For good measure, Stewart added a Michael Jordanesque reverse layup before putting Manuel Alleng on his rear end via a behind-the-back dribble that freed him up for an “and-one” play over Dario Cumberbatch.
Even when Warrens briefly managed to take Cougars out of transition in the third quarter, Stewart and Leacock just reverted to hitting contested three-pointers instead to put them up 58-20.
Stewart had a game-high 29 points and Leacock had a further 27 while Farrell led Warrens with 16.
Earlier, Ricardo “Aru” Toussaint scored the go-ahead free throw inside the final minute before adding a back-breaking layup seconds later to help Premier League debutants Challengers improve to a league-best 2-0 record with a 60-54 upset of Clapham Bulls.
Toussaint, Ramon Ward and Neil Patrick all finished with 11 points as Challengers led by as many as 12 (42-30) before watching Clapham take a brief lead early in the fourth quarter. But Toussaint broke open a 54 all deadlock with 37.2 seconds remaining via successive scores while Neil Leacock missed two potential game-tying threes in the dying moments.
Nicholas Jones had 12 points for Clapham, who fell to a 1-1 record.
