SUPER TEAM, huh?
Sure looks like all the power rests with Lakers.
Title No. 5 is but a game away for the champs, as Lumber Company LSC held Pinelands scoreless for a crucial five minutes down the stretch, before pulling out Thursday’s 62-59 win in Game 2 of the Co-operators General Insurance Premier League basketball finals at the Barbados Community College.
It proved the basis of Lakers’ now commanding 2-0 lead in a best-of-five series they weren’t even given a chance to compete in after the super-powered Pine swept both regular season encounters.
Now Pinelands are facing a sweep tomorrow.
Yet they seemed certain of avoiding that hole, at least early in the fourth period, as Charles Vanderpool’s third-quarter buzzer-beater sparked a run of seven unanswered points that put them ahead 55-47.
But the Pine never scored again until the one-minute mark, with Jeremy Gill’s free throw finally ending a spell where the team managed just one point in eight minutes.
Appearing in his first game all season, veteran acquisition Sydney “Bouncer” Rowe surely didn’t wait long to make his presence felt, having levelled Gill with a shot to the head on an on-the-ball screen at midcourt.
However, the ensuing tussle between Rowe and Junior Moore seemed to unsettle Pinelands moreso than the actual play itself, as the team never regained their composure after referees and players had to separate the two.
And LSC duly took advantage, turning the intensely-physical affair into a further defensive scrum that led to six straight free throws, including Jamar King’s go-ahead pair (57-56) with 3:12 to play.
King wasn’t done there, though, crowding Gill on virtually every play before going backdoor for a key lay-up and then watching Ian Alexander’s clutch jumper (62-56) just seconds later.
Yet Pinelands were still in the game, with Gill splitting a pair of free throws before Charles Vanderpool hit a jumper to make the contest a one-possession game inside the final 30 seconds.
But they never fouled to extend the game, and curiously failed to call timeouts on two occasions to advance the ball. Moore sealed their fate when he grabbed a rebound in the dying seconds and refused to take a shot before the horn sounded.
It was the baffling end to an all-out skirmish that actually started as a high-scoring affair, where Vanderpool and Ramon Simmons traded buckets with Keefe Birkett and Ormand Haynes for the game’s first four minutes.
Neither side led by more than Pinelands’ seven (25-18) as the two typically offensively-proficient units were kept to playing in the half-court against a pair of stingy defences.
The contest did get a little too chippy though, with both sides being forced to play through excessive contact, especially off the ball where Birkett and Gill were routinely held.
Pinelands did eventually threaten towards the end of the third, taking advantage of LSC’s big line-ups by beating their slowly-retreating counterparts for transition scores, before Halley Franklyn and Moore added lay-ups on the other side of the break.
Birkett led all scorers with 18 points and Ian Alexander added 13 for LSC, who can sweep Pinelands in the finals for the second time in as many years with a win tonight at the same venue.
Simmons and Vanderpool both scored 15 while Moore finished with 12 points and 13 boards.