Just one week before the big showdown members of the Linden and Georgetown basketball associations are promising the public an exciting night of basketball.
The two basketball powerhouses will clash on November 7-8 at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall in the junior and senior All-Star games. Linden will be defending titles in both divisions.
“We have selected our best players in both divisions,” says Abdulla Hamid, president of the Linden Amateur Basketball Association (LABA) during a press conference on Friday.
“The coaches have chosen the players they thought are capable of doing the job next weekend so we as the association are confident that these guys will do well.
“As you see, we really don’t have a big change to our team from last year that won the seniors, the only person really missing there is Steve Neils Jr., so it’s going to be a good game next week and I know that the public is looking forward to seeing it as well,” said Hamid. As it relates to the selections, Hamid pointed out that junior coaches, Floyd Martindale and Claude Williams have retained their positions but disclosed that coach of the winning senior team had migrated.
This year’s senior team will be coached by Calvin Slowe and Kester Jeffery.
National coach Bobby Cadogan said the city side will name their teams by Wednesday.
“We have a squad of 13 players that are presently still training so by Wednesday we will make the cut and hand the team over to the organizers,” Cadogan added.
Vijay Panday one of the organizers voiced his concern over the performance of the Georgetown team in past All Star games.“We had personally spoken to the GABA about it and we are serious because people are paying to come and see competitive basketball and we want the Georgetown players to know this as well,” said Panday Coach of the Beepat’s Scorpions team.
Georgetown seniors were blown away by the Linden seniors last year and easily destroyed the previous year although the juniors according to Panday have always been highly competitive. “Don’t worry we are coming hard,” assured Cadogan referring to the city team and also said that fans can expect a tight game. “We are coming to play basketball. That’s what I know for sure, the guys they know what have to be done to win this year so do myself and the other coaches, so we will come out hard,” Cadogan reassured.
Vice-President of Beepat’s Scorpions Warren Williams said he was confident that this year’s All Star week-end, like the six previous weekends, would be incident free.
“We want the public to come out because we once again have tight security. We have already looked after everything with the police and also we have private security so everything is in place,”said Williams.
The event is being sponsored by Digicel, Ansa McAl, Brunswick Sardine and Beepat’s Scorpions.
Linden (seniors): Dwayne “Brown Sugar’ Roberts, Marvin Hartman, Kevin Joseph, Jason Alonso, Quincy Jones, Nevin Grenville, Neil Simon, Neil Marks, Trevor Profitt and Louis James Coaches: Kestrel Jeffery and Calvin Slow
Linden (Juniors):Chris Williams, Akeem Kanhai, Orin Rose, Michael Turner, Shane Webster, Marlon Pollydore, Devon Gittens, Stefan Tappin, Harold Adams and Mark Rose.
Coaches: Claude Williams and Floyd Martindale
