Story by reader Kelwin Koh

Singapore Basketball Center, Friday, August 1, 2008 – Unity Secondary led from start to finish as they beat East View Secondary 76-48 in a National C Division Boys Basketball Championship game. Despite starting off with yet another slow offensive game, they pick up the pace in fourth to end on a scoring spree.

Although not playing at their offensive best, Unity seemed to have clicked on the defensive side as they denied East View any scoring opportunities for the first four minutes. By the time the first timeout was called by the young East View coach, Unity were only leading 5-0. Coming out from the timeout, Unity applied their full-court defensive strategy to extend their lead to 14-0 with 2:30 to go in the 1st quarter.

Once again the impressive defence of Zachary (#13, Unity) had the opponents scratching their heads as they desperately searched for a way to score. With a huge lead, the Unity coach had the freedom to try out a different strategy, having a smaller backcourt while pairing their usual towering frontline, Ivan (#4, Unity) and Gaddiel (#10, Unity). This created many problems for the East View backcourt as they found themselves struggling to keep up with the pace of the two Unity guards.

East View began to come to life in the 3rd quarter, going on a run behind the outstanding performance of their #13 and #6, closing the gap to 26-31. This prompted the return of the Unity full-court pressure. In addition, newcomer Barthiban (#11, Unity) provided an offensive push to pull away at the end of the quarter, with the score at 44-23.

In the final quarter, the Unity Secondary One player Deon (#12, Unity) played exceptional one-on-one defence on the EV #6, denying him a smooth game and totally taking him out of his game. Together with the sudden awakening of fellow Secondary One teammate, Delvin (#14, Unity), Unity went on a scoring rampage. Delvin and Wen Hao (#15, Unity) were dominant under the ring, gathering rebounds and blocking shots in every direction.

With numerous second chance points scored from missed shots by his teammates, Delvin soon chalked up 20 points. The game ended with a fantastic give-and-go play between Unity Secondary One guard Ivan (#4) and centre Delvin to make the final score 76-48.

Looking at the Unity team in the West Zone rounds, one has to wonder if it is possible for this team to improve any further in this short amount of time and with the start of the National rounds, they have indeed outdone themselves again as they made three changes to their roster (#11,#12 and #15). The most impressive physically has to be Unity center Wen Hao who is as tall as Delvin. With such talent on the bench, it remains to be seen if Yuying Secondary have enough firepower to see them safely through in their upcoming match this Thursday, August 7, 2008.