Skipton a step closer to the title

They did it the hard way on Monday night, but in coming from behind to overhaul one of their rivals Mayside 59-54 in a tight game at St Sampson’s High, Max Hunter’s side put their fate in their own hands.

Another victory over the same opponents in the final match of the regular top-flight season next month and Skipton are champions.

However, a Mayside win would open the door to both them and Le Mont Saint, with a three-way play-off still a distinct possibility.

Skipton must surely be considered favourites now, though, with the momentum garnered from this latest victory.

But despite all the Island quality in their ranks, it was a 16-year-old prospect who stepped up to the mark when it mattered most.

When Mayside coach Jai Vaudin called a time-out with 1min. 47sec. remaining, it was a two-point game with Skipton holding that slender advantage having only just wrestled back the lead in a see-saw battle.

The next score was critical and on a night when both sides had struggled to get on any sort of roll, Blake Carre showed the sort of composure necessary to make the telling contribution.

Four points in the space of 40 seconds may not seem much, but in the context of this encounter it was decisive.

His first basket of the two gave his side a vital four-point cushion going into the last minute and then, after Shek Sesay had briefly halved the deficit, Carre ensured that Skipton capitalised on a big offensive rebound claimed by Sam Simon with a jump-shot that hung in the air for an age before dropping to a roar of approval from his teammates on the sidelines.

There were 23.1 seconds left on the clock, but Mayside’s time was up.

It had, though, been another creditable display from Vaudin’s charges, who continue to miss main man Jason Hooper, but had Jason Hull back in their ranks for this one.

In the opening exchanges, it was Mayside versus Aaron Walden as the Skipton captain scored all of his side’s first seven points while Ben Colley took a lead role for the all-purples before Hull helped them forge ahead, with Sesay’s buzzer-beating lay-up giving them an 18-10 lead at the end of the first quarter.

Neither team added to their tally for more than two-and-a-half minutes at the start of the second period and although Mayside did go on to extend their lead to 10 at one stage, by half-time the gap was back down to four.

Remarkably, Max Hamon had contributed just a single point in the first half, but the change of ends worked wonders and in the third he hit a couple of trademark three-pointers to add to Matt Sawbridge’s early success from beyond the arc as Skipton enjoyed their best spell of the game.

In those 10 minutes, the four-point deficit became a five-point lead going into the final stanza.

Walden and Sawbridge added a couple more threes to push the advantage out to seven in the fourth while Mayside lost the services of Colley, who fouled out, but with Nico Robinson growing more and more influential as the seconds ticked by, Vaudin’s men were not done yet.

Robinson, Hull and Kaine Hyde all chipped in as they mounted a comeback of seven unanswered points that edged them ahead inside the final three minutes and it was anyone’s guess who was going to come out on top.

Typically, though, Walden showed all his character to bring his side level from the free-throw line and, despite having lost Sawbridge to injury following a heavy fall, that set the scene for Carre to produce his heroics in a tense climax.