The Tribune

WHAT looked like a blowout win early turned to a dogfight down the stretch as the defending GSSSA champions stayed atop the league standings.

The CC Sweeting Cobras withstood a second half surge from the Anatol Rodgers Timberwolves, winning 89-83 yesterday at the DW Davis Gymnasium.

The Cobras’ experienced squad is normally led by under-17 national team members Adrian Thompson and Corey Sands, but it was Andereas Blacks who scored a team high 28 points in the win.

After an almost 20-point first half lead dwindled to a single point in the fourth quarter, Blacks came up with a steal and fastbreak layup to extend the lead to three. His putback dunk with 14.6 seconds remaining just two plays later sealed the win for the top seed in the league. Delmar Hamilton finished with 20 points while Sands and Thompson added 12 and 10 respectively.

Cobras head coach Mario Bowleg said his team still has adjustments to make if they are to repeat and said the outcome of another matchup with the T’Wolves would not be this close.

“At a point I stopped coaching. I keep telling my guys they have to learn that when they are the veteran team they have to learn to control and learn their offence.

“I think we played great defence and the whistles allowed them to be in the game and to get back into it. We have to see this team again, right now we are the fourth seed we are number one, but if we see them again we will win by 15 or 20 points the way we should.”

Dominic Bridgewater led the T’Wolves with a game high 34 points while Azaro Roker added 13.

The Cobras opened a 17-point lead in the first quarter and led 34-23 at the half.

The lead reached as much as 13 points in the third quarter but the T’Wolves were able to trim that advantage to just five headed into the fourth.

A pair of free throws trimmed the deficit to just one for the first time since the early first quarter before Sands would respond with a three for the Cobras.

Roker’s play on the defensive end and on the glass energised Anatol, but it would be Blacks whose timely defensive plays and follow up scores that would give the Cobras enough to escape with the win.

Head coach Harcourt McCoy said he expects his team to contend if they are able to compete for the full duration of the game. “That’s the way this team has been playing. The first quarter is usually our worst, they wait to get a rise out of me and they respond.

In a game that started out the way it did for us to bring and down and not finish, we have to work on how to close things out,” he said.

“They say this is the number one team in the country, so if we can play them like this we can make an impact in the playoffs. I’m proud of the way we played but the way we started and the we finished leaves much to be desired.”