By Neto Baptiste
Flyers Basketball completed a three-game sweep of rivals Ovals Ojays to claim the Antigua and Barbuda Basketball Association (ABBA) Playoffs Championships, winning game three of their best of five series by a 73-68 margin in overtime at the JSC basketball complex on Tuesday.
Ovals got off to a promising start, claiming the first three quarters 14-10, 17-15 and 16-13 respectively. However, it was not enough to win the contest as Flyers rallied to take the fourth quarter 25-16 to level the scores at 63-63 and pushing the game to overtime.
Flyers then went on to outscore Ovals 10-5 in overtime to lift the Playoffs trophy and end the 2023 season on a high note.
David Hernandez carried the brunt of the scoring for Flyers with 16 points while grabbing 16 rebounds. He was assisted by Playoffs MVP Adonis Humphreys who had 13 points, 15 rebounds and four assists. Jabari Williams and Kenya Achom both picked up 10 points, also in the winning effort, and Williams also had 10 rebounds.
Coach of the winning team George Hughes said the contest was extremely close.
“They led us like until three minutes and 60 seconds in the fourth, so we were always playing from behind. I had to make some adjustments because we weren’t making shots, but they were just pushing all the right buttons. The loose balls were going their way; everything was just going their way,” he said.
He commended Ovals for a competitive series.
“They always come and give us a good fight. They actually stumped us [Tuesday night] with their game plan and we had to take some time to actually figure it out [and] eventually we did. Congratulations to them, they are championship pedigree and every time we meet we always have some epic encounters,” he said.
Hughes also took pride over the fact there were no overseas players in his squad this year.
“I think we can boast [that] we really didn’t bring in any international players. We were going to but we didn’t, so I can have the audacity to saw we won with relatively local players,” the coach said.
In a losing effort, Joshua Minner top-scored with 30 points for Ovals while grabbing eight rebounds. Alexis Jackson chipped in with 17 points and 15 rebounds.