The West Island Juvenile AAA Lakers defeated the Laval Noble 80-74 Sunday afternoon at John Rennie High School in Pointe Claire.
“Our goal was to beat their pressure. Our weakness is turnovers and they’re a pressing team. So we avoided turning the ball over and I thought we did a good job at that today. On the offensive side, we did a good job at crashing and passing the ball and playing as a team. Ultimately, that was the key to our win today,” said Lakers’ head coach Jon Merritt
For the Lakers’ last game of the season, the defence came out strong allowing only two points in the three first minutes of the game while Laval also strived to protect its bottle. At mid-first quarter, the Noble took the lead for the first and only time of the game as Christopher Adu outplayed the Lakers’ defence to make it to the net for the lay-up to make the score 6-5.
The Lakers quickly recovered scoring 15 more points before the end of the first quarter including eight points by Charles Miller who netted two three-pointers in the making. The quarter ended at 22-16. The Lakers accentuated their lead in the second quarter scoring 18 points against 14 by Laval. For the West Island, the scoring in the second quarter was the work of eight Lakers while only four players contributed to Laval’s offense. Adu was perfect with four successes on four foul shots.
The tempo of the game heightened in the third quarter but the Lakers were still able to keep Laval at bay, ending the quarter with an 11 point lead at 61-49. Miller again distinguished himself with six points for the Lakers.
Things really heated up in the fourth quarter as Laval came close to tying the score with five minutes left as the Lakers only led by four points at 67-63 and again with one minute left as Nickenson Denis netted his third three-pointer of the quarter to put the score at 78-74 in favour of the Lakers. But that is as close as Laval would come to tying up the game as the Lakers would score two more points with free throws before the final whistle.
“The game was close at the end but we’re not closing down the stretch. That’s our problem right now. All of the games that we’ve lost have been eight points and under so we’re just not closing down the stretch,” said Noble’s head coach Shawn Taylor.
