By Jarrod Potter
KEYSBOROUGH Youth Men will battle Coburg on Saturday night for the first Big V championship on offer.
The Cougars Youth Men’s team ran over the top of the Casey Cavaliers to secure a 92-66 win in the single elimination final.
Casey started strongly – pushing out to an early six-point lead – but Keysborough worked the margin down and flew ahead via centremen Ben Morwood (19 points, 8 rebounds) and Matt Walker (16 points).
“They weren’t on top for 15 rounds this year by accident,” Keysborough youth men’s coach Craig Smethurst said.”They were there because they are a good side and like us they like to get up tall and push people.
“We needed to show our size over their guys and we were really able to use our big guys well today (Sunday).”
“Was an even spread tonight but Benny and Matty were huge for us today (Sunday), Jamal ran the point again, but definitely the big guys did very well and Benny had 19 points and was very hard to guard.”
Keysborough will host Coburg Giants in the Big V Youth Men Two grand final – scheduled for Saturday night at Springers Leisure Centre from 8.30pm.
“Now they get to go into the final and take on the arch rival Coburg, who knocked us out of the finals last year.
“Few of them (the supporters) will be in Shepparton no doubt because it’s the second leg for the men’s team, but hopefully Chelsea and Casey get behind us.”
BIG V DIVISION 2 MEN
WAYWARD shooting and foul trouble played too great of a role in Keysborough’s 68-84 loss to Shepparton at home on Sunday.
Entering the Big V Division 2 men’s finals series for the third year in a row, Keysborough’s early flourish of points from Eric Miraflores (31 points) – including 3/3 three pointers in the first two minutes of the game – gave the home side a strong six-lead through the first term.
Shepparton started to assert its power and size as the Gators rebounded well to snuff out the lead and build one of their own via star import John Lewis (16 points, 17 rebounds) and off-the-bench work of Dylan Wayman (19 points).
Trailing by only two at the main break, Keysborough’s shooting game departed them as Shepparton found the boards and the better accuracy. The stronger bodies of the Gators proved too powerful as it shot away 24-18 in the final term to run out 16 points ahead of the Cougars.
Also hitting the stat-sheet for Keysborough were Kevin Benn (12 points) and Jackson Houpt (10 points, 7 rebounds).
