(ThePapare Basketball Championship 2017, Colombo, Sri Lanka). The tournament kicked off with 8 teams going head to head earlier today. During the evening matches held at Gateway College Colombo, Lyceum Wattala played against Visakha Vidyalaya while St. Joseph’s College Nugegoda took on Gateway College.
Lyceum International School – Wattala (LISW) v Vishaka Vidyaylaya (VV)
Visakha Vidyalaya is one of the new teams in this year’s tournament and are up against far more experienced teams than them. They met with an unfortunate loss to Lyceum Wattala with the final score reading 26-41. The top scorer for Visakha was Amanda Wijesekara, who made 9 points whilst Hazeena was the top point scorer for Lyceum with 11 points.
Lyceum dominated the post on both ends giving them multiple second shot opportunities allowing them to take the lead. Visakha failed to get through the Lyceum defense and were unable to stop Hazeena from scoring consecutive jump shots, leaving Visakha to trail behind Lyceum throughout the game. It was a one-sided affair as Lyceum took an easy win against the newcomers.
St. Joseph`s Girls School – Nugegoda (SJC Girls) v Gateway College – Colombo (GCC)
The other new comer to the A division is the Gateway College team who gave a tough fight to the girls from St. Joseph’s until they started to fall behind during the second half. At the end of the game the score was 57-20 in favor of Gateway. Nihari Perera was the top shooter for St. Joseph’s scoring 13 points while Sandali Liyanage added 14 points for Gateway.
Photo Album – TPBC17 | Girls – Group B | Evening Session | 02.09.2017
As the game started it was Gateway College who took the lead although after a couple of changes on the court by St. Joseph’s moving up to a half court press the tables turned on Gateway as they struggled to take the ball all the way to the other end. The St. Joseph’s defense was a tight, man to man defense, leaving no room for the girls from Gateway to take an open shot. This was especially true during the second half in which they only managed to score a mere 05 points. St. Joseph’s College settled into the game during the second half and annihilated Gateway on both the defensive and offensive ends as they wasted no time in creating a large deficit between them.
The girls from Gateway failed to stop the Josephians from taking layups and also failed to collect rebounds which resulted in their defeat against last year’s runners up.
