In this week’s ON THE BALL edition, NATION basketball writer Justin Marville continues his weekly review of the Premier League.
Chumps to champs? You can refer to these Cougars however you want once you also call them legitimate contenders.
That’s the sort of stuff you start hearing when you’re able to comfortably beat a fellow title-challenging team featuring Jeremy Gill, Charles Vanderpool, Corey McDonald and Daniel Lovell to remain perfect and extend the league’s longest active winning streak.
In a feel-good story that relegates Oprah and Aladdin to everyday banter, the men from Hothersal Turning have more than taken this season by storm after racing out to a table-leading 6-0 record. They have won by an unbelievable average margin of 26.2 points per game and boast of one of the most elite offences (84 ppg).
It’s not like it would be fair to label them upstarts or Cinderellas either, considering you can see the makings of a very good team with solid pieces built around two top ten players in Adrian Stewart and Ricardo Jemmott.
Who would’ve thought, huh? A perennial doormat that became the laughing stock of all Premier League basketball while routinely finishing in the bottom spot and failing to finish a single season with something remotely resembling a winning record.
But the joke is on the rest of the league right now as Cougars easily boast the deepest, if not best, outfit of the entire ten-team field. And it really might not be close.
They’re big, long and active up front, with Jemmott and Shawn Gaskin, plus that frontcourt has tonnes of depth with solid rotation players like Adrian Catlyn, Anthony “Bill” White and Damien “Pills” Nicholls.
And their rotation of perimeter players is equally impressive now that American Vanrossi Holder is coming off the bench to complement known scorers such as Stewart, Godfrey Leacock, Stevenson Callender and Selwyn Brooks.
The absence of a starting calibre point guard has been widely thought of as a major weakness, but not in my eyes, taking into account the breakneck pace at which they change ends.
True, we shouldn’t quite go crowning the paupers just yet, what with the season now starting and crucial matchups with Lakers and Sonics still outstanding. But the way these Cougars are playing, I’d say Lakers and Sonics are the ones entering those games with something to prove rather than the other way around.
Yeah, who would’ve thought, huh?
• Yes, I know, all the craze now is about throwing stars together in hopes of building a championship contender but tell me again exactly how that’s working out in the Pine.
Sure the experiment is just two games old, and Pinelands have only lost one of them. However, the squad looks exactly like what it is – a collection of individuals and not a fully functional unit that should be in sync.
Maybe more practice time and games against the league minnows changes all of that, or maybe the guys they’ve brought in are too old and set in their ways to change now and sacrifice shots for the sake of offensive balance.
At least in St John’s case they acquired two relatively young players in Ramon Simmons and Rahiim Gibbons for a team where they knew that the best player would still be the homegrown Akeem Marsh.
But Pinelands’ holdover star Vanderpool isn’t better than new signee Gill, and he might not even be better than McDonald (at least not in McDonald’s head), which is sure to create some issues with usage rates and shot distribution.
To be fair, the shots were somewhat evenly shared among Gill (17), McDonald (13) and Vanderpool (11), though Gill particularly looked to be forcing the issue while missing 11 of those attempts.
They’re still good enough players to figure it all out even if time isn’t quite on their side, or a remaining schedule that still includes Lakers and a second-half fixture that could see two games against the other top three teams when the competition is split into two zones.
• What is it about this season and broken rings?
First the hoops in the Wildey Gym go down due to a hydraulics malfunction and now the ring at the basket at the north end of the Barbados Community College is partially separated from the backboard.
What next, the hoops at the YMCA becoming unhinged from their supports next week?
But then again, considering the woeful shooting going in the brick-laying lower divisions then that outcome could only be destined to happen.