THE Isle of Man Schools’ Junior Basketball Final saw QEII High Shcool and Castle Rushen go head-to-head at the National Sports Centre last Tuesday.
After edging the league game by nine points QEII went into the final as clear favourites, with a nice balance of height, power and control in their starting five.
It all looked ominous for Castle Rushen as the western outfit flew out of the blocks, creating numerous chances with their big man Jake Murtagh picking up the rebounds.
They went into an early 4-0 lead and it could have been a lot more but the firm rings and backboards at the NSC meant a lot of missed shots that may have dropped on their home court.
However, from here it became the proverbial game of two halves with the defences in the ascendency as points were extremely hard to come by.
With QEII making such a fast start coach Dunn took an early time-out and the Rushen team tightened their defences, boxed out Murtagh and played much tougher in the back court. The Peel points dried up at their end of the court and at the other end the southerners started to exploit gaps in their opponent’s defence.
Good driving from Jack Thompson enabled him to get to the basket and strong shooting from Rory Neale helped the Castletown lads to a 15-4 lead at half time. In the second half coach Eyres put on a full-court press and the southerners just couldn’t get out of it and were unable to fully controlled the ball when in their possession.
They dribbled into trouble and turned the ball over on numerous occasions with travelling violations and, when they did occasionally make it to the basket, the Castle Rushen players were reluctant to shoot and their points tally stopped ticking over.
Slowly but surely QEII pegged back the Castle Rushen lead but were still two points adrift at the end of the third quarter. With three minutes to go they took the lead at 17-19 and the game could still have gone either way, but top scorer (12 points) and man of the match Max Crookall, who had led the QEII press to stem the southerners tide, finished with a flourish to give the western outfit a victory that looked beyond them at half-time.
Although it was a low-scoring affair, you couldn’t deny that it was exciting, as could be seen from the visible aging process of the two coaches throughout the game!
Jack Thompson received the MVP (Most Valuable Player) award for the Castletown side.
Captain Matthew Nixon collected the trophy for QEII. This is the first time that their name appears on the trophy and coach Eyres breaks a losing streak of six consecutive major finals where he has come away empty-handed. I’m sure there will be more to follow now that hurdle has been overcome.
Thanks go to Alan Walkingshaw and Trudi Crellin for officiating the match.