North Star Basketball Club

North Star 81 – 71 Belfast Star

North Star put in another impressive display to defeat Belfast Star for a second time in a week to keep alive their title challenge in the BNI Premier League. North Star remain undefeated at home and are now in third place in the Premier league with 3 games in hand over leaders the Ulster Elks. Chris Sumner again led the way with 20 points and Anthony Tench added 19 for the Derry side. The first three quarters of the game played out in a similar fashion to the first game. North Star continued with their pressing game which leaded to turnovers and the Derry side had a good balance on offense hitting from the outside and scoring under the boards with strong inside play from Tench and John Paul.

It looked to be another comfortable win however at the beginning of the forth Belfast Star showed their experience and talent to put together a run and managed to cut the North Star lead to just 7 points with 4 minutes remaining. North Star were in foul trouble and this allowed the Belfast team to get to the line and put up points with the clock stopped. However North Star managed to get out of their slump and closed the game out strong winning by a score line of 81-71.

North Star: C. Sumner 23, A Tench 19, K. Stanley 10, D Quigley 6, H Barbour 4, J Paul 4, J Ward 4,  J Lyons 4,  N McDermott 4 , K Temple 3

Belfast Star: P. Mullan 16, C Johnson 16, D Morgan 13, J Burns 10, D Pettigrew 7, F O’Connor 4, C Bradley 3