Giants looking to win third straight NPBA title

Tue, Mar 13th 2012, 10:16 AM

For the Commonwealth Bank Giants, the mission to three straight New Providence Basketball Association (NPBA) Championships moves into high gear tomorrow night.
The Giants are expected to play in the feature game when the much anticipated playoffs get underway tomorrow night at the C.I. Gibson Gymnasium. For Head Coach Perry 'Color' Thompson, it's going to be business as usual. He's confident that once his boys come out there and execute like they normally do, they would have no problems with their first round opponent, the Y'Cares Wreckers.
"We're confident but we're not over-confident," said Thompson yesterday. "I think that it's important to be optimistic but we have to be careful not to be over-confident because all the teams in the playoffs are beating up on one another right now. We just have to continue to be aggressive. We're going to try a few different things, but for the most part we're just going to continue doing what we normally do. It starts on the defensive end so we have to continue to bring the pressure and let our offense feed off that."
Thompson didn't get into the details of their game plan, but it is expected that their defense will pick up a notch. It always do come playoff time. They won the John Archer Division pennant race, finishing with a win/loss record of 12-4. Their mini three-game series against the Wreckers (9-7) starts tomorrow night.
The Giants and Wreckers split two games during the regular season, with the Wreckers winning the first meeting early in the season, and the Giants convincingly taking the second contest on Saturday night, the final night of the regular season. Michael 'Furley' Bain and Mark Hanna paced the Giants with 25 points apiece in that regular season finale - a 121-107 beat down of the Wreckers on Saturday night. Newcomer Jackson Jacobs added 19 points and Adrian 'Log' Miller contributed 13.
The Wreckers were led by Kevin Smith in that game with 25 points. Tavaris Roker had 18, and Ramano King contributed 17. The Wreckers are quite capable of beating any team on the league on any given night, so Thompson knows that it's imperative that they get off to a fast start in the short series.
"The first game is always key," said Thompson. "We feel that we match up well with them, so we're looking forward to some good things. We lost Jeremy (national team player Jeremy Hutchinson), Eugene (Horton) and Dencil Edgecombe, but we had some additions who I think are ready to step up. Gamaliel (Rose) is ready to step it up and give us some good minutes in the playoffs. The team that executes better will be victorious. Once our guys remain injury free, that is the main thing for us. We are trying to three-peat, and we are very confident that we will be able to do that. We are looking forward to some exciting things," he added.
Some of the new players the Giants added in the offseason are sharp shooter Jacobs, and forward Nico Scavella and Marvin Barr. The other playoff match-ups will be the P.J Stingers (11-4) taking on the Police Crimestoppers (9-7), the MailBoat Cybots (14-2) going up against the BTC Digitals (7-9), and The Real Deal Shockers (10-5) going to battle against the Phil's Rockets (7-9).
The NPBA is on a tight schedule this year as the playoffs and championship have to be finished in time for the Bahamas Basketball Federation (BBF) Round-Robin Championships, set for April 19-21, in Bimini.

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