Matt Duenas and Jericho Cruz played on a level of their own over the past season, and officials of the recently concluded 2006 Island-wide Village Youth Basketball League recognized them for their efforts.<\/p>\n
Duenas, who led the San Antonio Sixers to an undefeated regular season finish and an appearance in the championship game, was crowned as regular season most valuable player.<\/p>\n
With Duenas playing consistently, Sixers I was able to tackle all challenges in the regular season and took home the pennant crown with a perfect 7-0 record.<\/p>\n
Duenas, who finished as the league\u2019s No. 2 scorer with an average of 14 points per outing, was pleased with his effort this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m feel good and proud of what I was able to do,\u201d the 14-year-old Saipan Southern High School student said. \u201cI did well all season and I\u2019m proud of my team. We work together and played good.\u201d<\/p>\n
For his part, Cruz, who is no stranger to the IVYBL spotlight, earned the championship MVP trophy after scoring 23 points against the Sixers I to lift his team to a 42-40 victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really wanted to win before leaving,\u201d Cruz said, citing that the season was his last in the 14-and-under IVYBL. \u201cI wasn\u2019t supposed to play, but because we lost last year, I really wanted to do this and help the team win the championship.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cruz credited his team\u2019s accomplishment to \u201chard work and practice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe worked really hard and the Sixers were tough but we were able to come through. We were serious in the game and really wanted to win,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Also getting recognized was scoring champion Luizi Reyes of the third place CTSI Logistics-basked H.O.M. Saints after the cager scored about 149 points in the seven games he played for an average of 21 points per outing.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Sixers I coach Ray Duenas took home the coach of the year award after leading his team to the finals and guiding the cagers to the undefeated regular season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Matt Duenas and Jericho Cruz played on a level of their own over the past season, and officials of the recently concluded 2006 Island-wide Village Youth Basketball League recognized them for their efforts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100045\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}