Knight, Saints to clash in Western Basketball final

MoBay Cricket Club Knights and Falmouth Saints will go in search of their first Western Basketball Association (WBA) Elite Basketball League title after both advanced to the finals last week.

Knights showed character in overturning a 1-0 deficit in their best of three semi-finals series, with a game three 75-63 victory over Montego Bay Boys and Girls Club Warriors last Saturday, at the MoBay Cricket Club Court, to take the series 2-1.

Saints were awarded a 2-0 sweep of Granville Jaguars last Tuesday, after the latter failed to show up for game two due to a depleted squad.

The Jaguars went down 84-60 in game one.

Sheldon Pearson, coach of the Knights, who were runners-up last season, is confident that they will make that final step to get a hold on their first title.

TACTICAL MOVES

"We will have better momentum going into the finals because of how hectic our semi-final was. However, we have to take into consideration that we will be playing a bigger team and it will take tactical moves to get the better of them," Pearson said. "Being the number one seed, we have always had the target on our back ... . We are the beaten finalist from last year, so the onus was on us to get back to the finals this year. Definitely, this year we are going for that final step to get a hold on our first title after getting close a couple of times in our five seasons."

After making it to the quarter-finals for the past four seasons, Saints are determined to ride this season's momentum all the way to the title.

Assistant coach Martin Belnavis relishes the added rest in comparison to their counterparts, whose semi-finals went to game three.

"We had a lot of players with niggling injuries so the rest will prove to be important to us going into the finals," Belnavis said. "They (Knights) were dominant throughout the regular season. However, we know how to put it together when it really matters and that is what we are aiming to do. It's finals so we want to go out there, play the best 40 minutes of basketball in each game and hopefully, the result will be in our favour.