The Tribune

By RENALDO DORSETT

Sports Reporter

rdorsett@tribunemedia.net

THE race for the Caribbean Cup gets underway today as the Bahamas looks to improve on last year’s fifth place finish at the Caribbean Basketball Confederation Championships.

Hosted in Tortola, British Virgin Islands, the tournament is designed to determine the top team’s in the region as they seek qualification in further international events. The Bahamas is scheduled to open at 3:30pm against the USVI.

Team Bahamas is slated to play out of Group A with Antigua and Barbuda, St Vincent and the Grenadines and the US Virgin Islands.

In Group B are defending champions Jamaica, Barbados, British Virgin Islands and Guyana. In game two, they will face St Vincent and the Grenadines tomorrow at 4:15pm and their final game in the group stage will be Wednesday at 4:15pm against Antigua and Barbuda.

With the results of the group stage pending, playoff rounds will be played Friday and the final rounds Saturday.

In last year’s tournament, the Bahamas recovered from an opening round loss to the USVI and followed with big wins over the Dominican Republic, Barbados and Guyana for their final place in the standings.

It was a nail-biting 56-51 loss to USVI that ultimately left the Bahamas out of medal contention, fitting that the teams will meet in the opener again this year.

USVI had a differential of +19 compared to the Bahamas’ +21 however they held the edge in head-to-head matchup and thus advanced to the semi-final while the Bahamas was placed in the reclassification bracket.

The team will be led by head coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin for the second consecutive year. She will be assisted by Varel Clarke-Davis, also in her second year in that role and first year coach Donnie Culmer.

“We have a very young, but talented team, so hopefully we can use that to compensate for our lack of experience,” said McPhee-McCuin, the head coach of Jacksonville University.

“Like I said earlier, we’re missing Jonquel Jones and Leashja Grant, but we feel we have added some players who we will have to rely on to make up the difference.”

For the first time in tournament history, the CBC Championship winners will be presented with the Caribbean Cup.

Patrick Haynes of Guyana, CBC’s vice president of finance and marketing, designed the trophy for the 2015 event.

The top part of the newly created Caribbean Cup trophy has a gold plated metal cup in the form of a chalice with two handles. The base is made of a dark emperador marble and sits on a three-tier oak mantle.

FIBA, CBC and the Championship logos and the name Caribbean Cup are engraved on the front of the trophy.

The top three finishers in 2015 will also receive newly designed CBC Championship medals, also designed by Haynes.

CBC medals will be the Olympic style format with the CBC logo in the centre and the text “XXIII CBC CHAMPIONSHIP FOR WOMEN” at the top and the host country and year at the bottom “TORTOLA 2015.”