7 News Belize

Belize Basketball’s Olympic Dream Deferred
posted (July 12, 2010)
Belize's dreams of qualifying in basketball for the 2012 London Olympics have been dashed after the national team failed to advance in the Centrobasket tournament. That's after they were edged out by Puerto Rico on Saturday, 96 - 88. Team Belize competed throughout and played well in spurts but never managed to take the lead even though they did tie the score in the fourth quarter.

In the end, team Belize was undone by poor three point shooting, and the inability to defend against the much bigger Puerto Rico team. The proof of that was that the Puerto Rican's seven foot - two inch center Peter Ramos scored 27 points and only missed 6 shots. That team also had three current NBA players on its roster.

For Belize, Milt Palacio was the leading scorer with 24 points and 6 assists while Keenan Jourdan had 19 points. That loss left Belize two and two in the tournament - the same as both Mexico and Cuba. But in the end, only Cuba qualified to go unto the next round because they had the best point differential, after trouncing Trinidad and Tobago by 30 points.

And for fans of the Belize team, the sad part is that Belize had its easiest win of the tournament against Cuba! In the medal round, the Cubans went unto to lose against the host country, and played Panama for the bronze earlier this evening. The gold medal game between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico is being played at this hour.

Apart from not qualifying, observers speculate that this is probably the end of the road for this nucleus of senior players as the core group of the players who first made their name at the CARICOM championships of 1998 are nearing or at retirement age.

It's now unto the next one for the Basketball Federation which has a promising youth team headed to the Guatemala in two weeks for the Centro-Basket under 15 tournament.

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