Coach: Pitbulls Had Hard Schedule

The coach of the Antigua & Barbuda Pitbulls, Mahijah Davis, believes that a “very hard” schedule defeated his team’s chances of repeating as champions of the Leeward Islands Basketball Association (LIBA) Under-20 Championships.
The Pitbulls could only qualify for a third place match against Anguilla after they were beaten 88-56 by eventual winners St Maarten on Friday night at the JSC basketball complex.
According to Davis, the schedule may have favoured the St Maarten team.
“I think we had a very hard schedule in terms of us playing four back-to-back hard games. The champion team [St Maarten], they played Anguilla, which was their first game, and then they had the two easiest teams in the tournament in Nevis and Montserrat. We played Nevis and [after that game] we had all hard challenges, but we are not making complaints because we had set a goal in that we wanted to win all five games and we ended up with four out of five,” he said. 
Antigua & Barbuda made light work of Anguilla in their third place battle, winning the contest by 12 points (66-54).
T Benta and A Browne both had 10 points for the victors while K Gumbs sank 14 points for Anguilla.
Going forward, Davis is hoping to strengthen his preparation in some areas.
“We will need a lot more gym work for our players so that we can get a little stronger, and a little more patience — those are just two of the areas where we fall short a bit,” the former player said.
Despite the disappointment, however, Davis believes that the sport has a bright future in the current crop of players.
“A lot of good things have been happening over the last three to four years and I think that basketball is coming back slowly. It was a real wide gap [from that time] to now, when we have young kids that can actually play the game at the next level. Once we continue to work with them for the next two or three years, we should have some real good future basketball players,” he said.
St Maarten defeated St Kitts 82-76 when they met in the finals on Sunday night. C Belboda led the scores for St Kitts with 24 points while J Ireland top scored with 21 points for St Maarten.