Story and pictures by Lai Jun Wei.
Singapore Basketball Centre, Tuesday, March 18, 2008 – Raffles Girls’ School (RGS) let out a huge sigh of relief when they barely overcame Dunman Secondary 41-40 after a nerve-wracking fourth quarter in their National Championship first round game.
This B Division Girls National Championship game started at a relatively slow pace with RGS a little easy on the aggression but doing enough to walk off with a 8-6 first quarter lead.
The second quarter started to heat up when Dunman put pressure on the RGS side, managing eventually to tie the game at 20-20 by the end of the second quarter.
With both teams neck and neck, the game could have gone either way with Dunman all fired up to take the game from the 2007 B Division runners up. They increased pressure and put up excellent plays, scoring nine points in the third quarter while limiting RGS to just three to lead 29-23.
The fourth quarter was make or break for RGS. As the girls from Raffles struggled to catch up, Dunman tried their best to maintain their lead but eventually allowed RGS to tie the game at 39-39. An untimely foul by Raffles with 45 seconds to go saw the referee award a free throw to Dunman. Dunman made no mistake in converting the free throw to go one point up, causing RGS to call a timeout to regroup while their supporters were on edge.
When the game resumed, the cheers from both side grew louder, with the coach from a team not involved in the game even shouting “Defend!” to the players of this match. With some jostling on the court, Dew (Raffles #10) managed to gain possession and she made a half court dash to execute a lay up to make it 41-40, heightening the tension with 19 seconds remaining.
With nine seconds to go, RGS let possession slip and the girls both teams descended on the loose ball and got into a snatching game. Dunman hopes were raised when possession was awarded to Dunman. As the Dunman players tried desperately to score, they lost possession to RGS in the last three seconds of the game. As shouts of “Hold! Hold the ball!” came from the Raffles’ supporters, the clock ticked down to zero, leaving Dunman despondent and RGS heaving a sigh of relief.
Raffles might have won the match, but Dunman deserved to be commended as well. Having held the lead for so long, their teamwork should have given them the win. Sadly, Lady Luck was just not smiling on them.
Top scorer:
Dunman #14 – 16 points
Ed’s note: If you recognise yourself or your teammates in any of the photos, do leave your names behind in the comments section and we will update the captions accordingly. Thanks!
Dunman is good.
well, dunman almost won nanyang but still, they lost)= so now they out of nationals)= anyways, its quite good for a first batch girls(: jiayous dunman sec !
Actually dunman should have won this match de,cause they work so hard then them.God is so unfair lor,the winner should’n be rgs is dunman sec lei.Their ball so tieko.
DUNMAN jiayous
refreees should be more porfessional in judgement and fair to the team “`admitting the foul and not blowing the whistle it”s just not right to abuse their authorities….it”s should be reported to the concerned authority
raffles off form? i don’t think so. oh please lah, you all think dunman is lousy then they play with raffles play so good then you all crap crap crap and say off form off form. who also know how to say off form. then i might as well say dunman off form also argh zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz -_- get a life mans