The Last Day

Its the third and last day of the tournament, and we ranked 3rd place. We had 2 games to play. The first game was to determine who was going to play the team that was first place. RCHK was first, HIS was second. It was our second time playing against HIS. This time we knew what we had to do. We have gained some experience from the first time. HIS has the advantage of being on their home court, but we got rid of our away side jitters. We knew who we were playing, and we went in the game strong. The first quarter started out pretty even as we kept a tight gap between our scores. Throughout the game both teams had their share of buckets, and unfortunately we did not have enough to catch up for the win. We encountered foul trouble with our big guys, allowing HIS to get some easy foul shots. Many of our offensive plays ended unluckily as the ball just didn’t want to sink into the hoop. We played hard and reached a final score of 32-28, losing only by 4 points. Our guards Jeffrey, Sunny, Daniel R., Daniel F., Taleni and I did a great job getting some outside shots. We all performed extremely well and definitely all had a great game. We had a better game around the outside as HIS had the advantage of penetrating and getting the ball inside. HIS’ speed got the best of our big guys Hendrik, Bowen, Mike and Jimmy, causing our defensive pressure less effective as they had to play out on them. Even though we were didn’t make a comeback, this was a better result comparing to our first match against them for sure. Unable to bring home the gold, we still had one more match to determine third place for bronze.

Diogo Silverio

It was such an experience playing for what maybe my last basketball game for TIS. The game, started out sketchy but eventually we got our act together. I give props to the other team for still giving us a run for or money despite losing to us yesterday by a significant difference. The long hours of practice was fully worth where we were today.

The third place match was against HKA, a team we have already played in this tournament during the round-robin. We beat them the first time 65-12, and this time, we were also successful in taking the W to gain the bronze medal. We went into this game confidently, thinking that we would be able to win with no problems. We struggled in the first half as they kept the scores close, at one point taking the lead. As a team we fought through without a problem and gained the lead back. With an end score of 30-12, we took victory over HKA once again.

Daniel F and Diogo S.