10th final for Garrison

AS CONSTANTS GO, Garrison in a girls’ basketball final is as reliable as they come.
Prolific forward/centre Shannon Hackett had a game-high 19 points as defending five-time WIBSICO Shirley champs reached an unprecedented tenth title game by thumping Queen’s College 49-31 in Friday’s semi-finals at the Barbados Community College.
The win maintained the perennial hoops queens’ streak of reaching every championship contest since the tournament’s inception back in 2000.
And Garrison wasted no time in preserving that run, storming out to a 26-8 first quarter advantage before extending that cushion to an unassailable 20-point cushion (36-16) by the half-time break.
Oddly enough, QC actually held Garrison to just one field goal within the first three minutes, with their full court press initially creating problems for the champs’ backcourt.
But Hackett and Vanessa Reid-Cox continually found themselves unmarked under the basket once Nikita President began to beat the first wave of QC’s defence.
A subsequent switch to a half-court zone didn’t help matters either, as the shorter Husbands lasses still had no answer for Hackett and Reid-Cox’s combined length in the paint.
Worse yet, combo guard Ashlee Daniel picked up three quick fouls within the first four minutes, leading to a 13-0 Garrison run when she was forced to sit out the rest of the period.
Her return didn’t change the tide though, not when Hackett proved equally as severe in the ensuing second, attacking the rack at will for all but one of her side’s ten second-quarter points.
The Dayrells Road side led by as many as 14 points (47-23) behind a productive third quarter from Reid-Cox before Garrison cleared the bench in the midst of the rout in the fourth.
Reid-Cox finished with 17 points, while Esther Ochieng topscored for Queen’s College with 11.
In the other semi-final, utility forward Jeneice Clarke scored 26 points against her former school Springer to lead last season’s losing finalists,
St Lucy to a rematch of the 2010 final following a 55-19 victory.
Clarke and Leah Bannister got going from as early as the opening tip, but it wasn’t until opposing centre Winmalecia Bowen’s offensive struggles in the second quarter that St Lucy opened up a sizeable lead (29-19).
Springer then went scoreless for the first four minutes of the second half as Clarke scored eight points as part of a 14-0 run that duly put away the contest.
Bannister ended with 13 points and Iesha Moses added ten while Bowen led all Springer players in scoring with six points.
The final is slated for 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday at the same venue.