Junior national point Guard Richard Mohandatt showcased his remarkable quickness and sound fundamentals to secure an awesome victory in the Skills Challenge during the Youth Basketball Guyana (YBG) Challenge Series, last Sunday night at the Cliff Anderson Sport Hall.
In what was incidentally his final tournament for the University of Guyana (UG), ‘Richie’ took on a field of more than 20 competitors, and made it to the finals before securing a clutch performance to tie it up with Linden Technical Institute’s (LTI) guard and his junior national and YBG elite teammate Marlon Pollydore.
The skills challenge included an obstacle course covering half the basketball court. Competitors were required to complete drills that required mastery of fundamental skills of the game, such as passing and receiving the ball, shooting jump shots in rhythm, layups, and free throws.
In the final round, Pollydore overtook third-place finisher Neil Gordon, who had posted a superb score of 21 seconds. Pollydore was flawless, making both his right- and left-hand layups; swishing both jump shots, and sinking his bonus free throw from the line for a final time of 13.2 seconds.
‘Richie’ stepped up to the start-line and rocketed through the cones, drilled both shots and dropped both layups before ‘making it right’ from the charity stripe (free throw line). The time-keepers were astonished; Mohandatt equalled Pollydore’s time.
In the tie-breaker round, each competitor mirrored the other’s performance once again, but Mohandatt (16.26) managed to edge Pollydore (16.56) by three hundredths of a second (.30s). Later on that night, Richie dropped 29 points to help UG get to overtime, before falling short to LTI as Pollydore got his revenge. Mohandatt, who will be migrating to the U.S.A. today, did manage to cop the Most Valuable Player (MVP) award as another ‘going away’ accolade.
Pollydore also got hardware from the free-throw shootout competition, in which he teamed up with junior national teammate Geoffrey LaRose to triumph from the charity stripe. LaRose and Pollydore combined to sink eight free throws, while Ronald Chang-Yueng and Andrew Peroune copped second place.
