The Under 19 Inter- International Basketball Tournament commenced yesterday at the British School Indoor and Outdoor Basketball Courts. The tournament which will be played across 9 days will consist of 8 girl’s teams and 16 boy’s teams from across the island.
Gateway Colombo received a walk over after Lyceum Ratnapura failed to turn up, while CIS Colombo propelled by Nithesh Ranasinghe who scored 20 points managed to defeat Lyceum Panadura 69-22 in a one sided affair.
As the day progressed, CIS Colombo scraped through to defeat Lyceum Wattala in the first girl’s match of the day. The scores at half time read 19-18 in favour of CIS, but they proved to be too strong in the 3rd and 4th quarters resisting a strong Lyceum Wattala fight to win 38-31. Tyra de Silva was exceptional for CIS Colombo with 18 points to her name.
Hosts British School took on Gateway Colombo in the next girl’s encounter which turned out to be tighter than the previous game. With scores level at 12-12 at half time, the hosts managed to scrape through to a low scoring 29-24 victory with Lihini scoring 18 points which is more than half of the British School total.
The first day concluded with two boys games, Lyceum Nugegoda defeating Elizabeth Moir 43-36 and Alethea International School beating Wycherly 36-23 in two fairly comfortable victories for the winning teams.
Viren Samaranayake was the highest individual point scorer for the day with 25 to his name as he helped Lyceum victory against Moir.
