Tivoli Wizards playing for Pride in Flow NBL

Come Friday, August 16, the Tivoli Wizards will have a chance at the third place spot in this season’s Flow National Basketball League (FNBL) competition. The 2011 champions did not advance to the finals but go up against relative newcomers Pembroke Hall at the National Stadium Courts to redeem a place in the top three. 

 

Pembroke Hall was overrun by defending champions Urban Knights 79-58 and 82-55, but the Wizards have no plans of taking it easy on them. “This is very important to us because we want to protect our reputation,” said Tivoli Wizards team manager Troy Constantine. “We’re going at them with all guns blazing.” 

 

Constantine said he doesn’t expect Pembroke Hall to just roll over and play dead either as they also want to make a name for themselves as the new kids on the block that almost made it all the way. 

 

The Wizards began the season with high expectations. Blessed with some of the island’s best home-grown talent, the Wizards have been contenders for the past four seasons, but were eventually derailed by darkness. The Wizards share courts near Darling Street with the Tivoli Gardens netball team. It is where the players hone their talents at night as the bid for yet another national title but early this year the Jamaica Public Service turned the lights on out them. Constantine reveals that their monthly light bill was somewhere between J$18,000 and J$20,000. The bill then jumped to about J$240,000. It was eventually discovered that people were stealing electricity from the court and they would end up having to pay. They refused and the power was cut.

This forced the team to make alternative arrangements which turned off many of the players. “We had to travel to Olympic Gardens in the evenings to train and some of the players were not coming out. It put off some of them,” Constantine revealed. “We didn’t get the commitment from some of the players and eventually team came down from 15 to between nine and 11 players.”

In the playoff for third, The Wizards will depend on stalwarts like Anthony Farquharson, Audley Smith, the defensive capabilities of Mowanga Campbell and the rebounding of Troy Campbell, whose absence late in the season was also a major blow to the team. Constantine believes ramping up the defense against Pembroke Hall will help pave the way towards victory as the team situation continues to improve.

The management has worked out an agreement with the JPS, so the team should soon be able to train on home ground again. They will now focus on taking on the job at hand, as nothing less than third is acceptable. “Fourth place? No sir. We will not settle for fourth,” Constantine said.  Now that they are playing for pride, the Wizards have suddenly had the lights switched on again.

Tivoli Wizards will play Pembroke Hall for third place on Friday, August 16 at the National Stadium while Urban Knights and Spanish Town Spartans will face off in the best of three finals on August 16 and 20 at the same venue.