Esmond's YTE sink Kitchen of Jasmine

YUAN TONG ENTERPRISE (YTE) left it till late to surge past Kitchen of Jasmine 84-70 in the quarter-final match of the 2009 Brunei Pepsi Cup at the Brunei Basketball Association court in Batu Bersurat last night.

Esmond Tan capped off a brilliant shooting night with 33 points and Benjamin Lim contributed 18 points for YTE.

For Kitchen of Jasmine, Hj Md Rahmat Hj Suhaili led the way with 32 points and Armando Estoesta finished with 17 points.

YTE, a team made up of the national cagers, started out with a man-to-man full court pressure defence and the strategy paid off handsomely helping them to an 8-2 run in the fourth quarter over their tiring opponents.

The run, led by Yap Chun Ping with six points, opened up the biggest lead of the night a 70-60 advantage at that point.

With their new found confidence, YTE started rotating the ball well to outscore their opponents 22-12 in the period to finish off the game.

"We knew our opponents had no stamina eventhough they played very well. Even their guard couldn't dribble properly so we applied man-to-man defence that worked well late in the game," said Tony Tan, head coach of YTE.

"We only had seven players who were fit to play as some had only recently returned, but we managed to play well tonight (Sunday)," added the head coach.

Asked about the semi-finals, Tony replied: "It is looking good now that we have won one game."

The game was close from the beginning and YTE only managed a 21-20 lead going into the second period. With Md Zainul Ashyraf Hj Hussin at the heart of Kitchen of Jasmine's defence, they were hauling down the rebounds.

However, YTE changed their strategy in the second quater using a bigger line up to counter that.

Hj Md Rahmat was on fire, carrying his team on the offensive end. He made four out of four from three-point territory in the first half to keep his team alive.

YTE were also making bad passes that were easily intercepted by Kitchen of Jasmine. This helped Kitchen of Jasmine grab the lead at 39-38 going into halftime.

With the game being so close, YTE turned to Esmond, who took over in the third quarter with a dominating performance to score 15 points. He was also tasked with closing down Hj Md Rahmat, who couldn't shoot from beyond the arc.

Maxim Yap, head coach of Kitchen of Jasmine, said that they only had themselves to blame for the loss.

"We were dribbling the ball too much and there was not enough movement off the ball," said Maxim.

In the other quater-final, Babes Boutique defeated Bukit Ladang 77-54.

Meanwhile, in the women's championship match, Ismakom outclassed Muara Gas 65-36 to take the title. The Brunei Times