By Neto Baptiste
Flyers Basketball jumped out to a one-nil lead in the Basketball Association’s best of five series playoff final against Ovals Ojays on Wednesday night, claiming the opener by a 76-63 margin when they clashed at the JSC basketball court.
Flyers got off to a confident start, outscoring Ovals 25-13 in the opening quarter, but the teams were evenly matched in the second quarter, both sinking 22 points. Ovals rebounded to claim the third quarter 19-11 while Flyers took the fourth and decisive quarter by an 18-9 margin.
Xavier Meade led the scoring for Flyers with 25 points while grabbing eight rebounds and five assists. Adonis Humphreys assisted with 16 points and 13 rebounds while Jabari Williams picked up 12 points and 14 rebounds.
Alexis Jackson, in a losing effort, sank 22 points and pulled 13 rebounds for Ovals while Joshua Minner contributed with 17 points.
Coach of the Flyers team, George Hughes, said that outside of issues with effectively guarding Jackson throughout the match-up, his players were on point.
Hughes said the key to winning the series is highly dependent on the outcome of Sunday’s game two.
“It was quite difficult to get Alexis under control because he came to play. Alexis is seven feet, and so it is not an easy thing defending against him, and I got the impression that the whole offense was centered around getting him the ball, so we had to just make some adjustments where that was concerned, but he played well so we weren’t able to stop him, just contain him,” he said.
Sunday’s game two is slated to shoot off at 8:00 pm.
“If they win, they even-up the series and if we win, we make it a little more difficult for them to win three games in a row, so it’s a very pivotal game and we expect them to come and try to have an onslaught with us, but we are going to just try and weather the storm until we see an opportunity where we can make our run,” he said.
Game two of the series will be held on Sunday starting at 8:30 pm.