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St. Lucia Recover to Defeat Antigua Barbuda in four sets
LA BORIE, Grenada, November 2, 2018 – After falling
behind in the first set St. Lucia awoke like the proverbial
sleeping tiger to dominate proceedings in the remaining three
sets eventually claiming a 3-1 victory (22-25, 25-18, 25 -20 and
25 17)
The Antigua/Barbuda duo of Jamarie James (16 pts) and Adrian
Constant (12 pts) had very good performances in all departments,
spiking for 19 points and blocking for 6 points among them.
However Joseph Clercent, outside hitter of St. Lucia
overshadowed them with a superlative performance. He had 26
points made up of 25 spikes and a monstrous and memorable block
at the net. He was virtually unstoppable particularly when he
came through the middle from the back court. Clercent got good
support from Augustin Faulkner with 14 points and Tevin St. Jean
who chipped in with 11 points.
Both teams were awful in making errors particularly from the
service line. In total St. Lucia donated 37 while receiving 34
from Antigua/Barbuda. Blocking scores were dead even at 9 but
St. Lucia held the edge in spike 44-32 and in serves 7 to 5
Carl Williams of Antigua Barbuda was pensive while summing up
what happened. “I think our guys relaxed a bit after winning the
first game and one can ill afford to do that against a team like
St. Lucia who has an all-around good game. Our main areas of
concern is stopping Joe (Clercent). He is the heart and soul of
the St. Lucia attack and we have to go back to the drawing board
and come up with a plan for him” , he said.
Mr Terry Verdant of St. Lucia was even more confident that he
has the best team in the competition. “What went wrong in the
first set can be attributed to a change in the condition of the
playing ball. All of my power servers had difficulty in serving
and placed the ball outside many times. We adjusted that and
went for float serves and depended on our defense and passing to
get into attacking positions and it worked well for us”, he
accounted.
The win propelled St. Lucia automatically to the semifinals to
await the winner of the of the quarter finals. Quarterfinals and
Semifinals will be played on Saturday 3rd November.
Antigua/Barbuda would have place 2nd and will play
against the third place of group B in the Quarterfinals. |
