Joes trounce Bens 47-36

Wins u-13 Basketball Championship

Sanjaya Ariyarathne

BASKETBALL: St.Joseph's College, Colombo put up a fine display to trounce St.Benedict's College, Colombo by 47 points to 36 to become champions in their All Island under 13 `A' division Basketball championship which was concluded at Darley Road yesterday.

The tournament was organised by the Sri Lanka Schools Basketball Association which saw the participation of 16 teams.

Josephian cagers found it difficult to overcome Bens in the early part of the game where the scores stood at 9-11 points in favour of Bens at the end of the first quarter.

At half time, Bens were in the lead 17-12. But in the third quarter Joes put up a better performance to reduce the lead to 22 to 24.

At the final quarter the game began to change when Josephians were fighting back well to collect more points with Yohan Keyser giving a tremendous boost to his team. He was well supported by Praneeth Udumalagala, Shehan Fernando, Dane Joshua, Sangeeth Suriyage, Sajanakan Siriselvakumar, Ramila Fernando and Glen Isaak.

Joes took the advantage of playing on their home soil while Bens lost the concentration they had on the game due to the huge support by the Josephian supporters.

Finally the match ended with St.Joseph's bagging major honours of the tournament with Yohan Keyser receiving the award for the Most Valuable Player of the tournament while the skipper of his team Praneeth Udamalagala received the Best Defensive player's award.

Dilanka Silva of St. Benedict's College bagged the award for the Best Offensive Player of the tournament.

From the initial stage of the tournament, Joes displayed brilliant performances to remain unbeaten as they defeated St.Annes College, Kurunegala (48-13), Dharmasoka College, Ambalangoda (50-22), Trinity College (51-24) in the preliminary round matches.

In the quarter finals Joes subdued Gateway College (52-32). Before reaching final Joes defeated Mahanama College by 47 to 41 points in the semi final.

The winning team was coached by Randima Roshan. The final was refereed by Ranil Suranga and Christoper Karunasinghe.

In the play off for the third place Maris Stella College, Negombo registered a 59-55 points win over Mahanama College. Sean with a contribution of 20 points was the highest scorer for winners.

Infaz with 14 and Janith with 8 were the other best scorers for Maris Stella, while Susitha with 20 points and Lasitha with 12 points was on good form for Mahanama.