Guam used its height and heft advantage to the hilt in dealing CNMI 1 its first loss, 103-69, in the Micronesian Basketball Tournament, as the girls 17-and-under division wrapped up its round-robin games Wednesday night at the Marianas High School Gymnasium.<\/p>\n
Despite the loss, CNMI 1 still finished second in the standings and joined its archrival in the crossover semifinals starting today at the Gilbert C. Ada Gymnasium. <\/p>\n
CNMI 1 will take on No. 3 CNMI 2 starting at 4pm, while undefeated Guam will square off against winless and fourth seed Tinian in the other semis pairing earlier in the day at 10am. <\/p>\n
Guam started out like a house on fire, leading CNMI 1 18-8 after one period of play thanks to the 10 combined points of Kali Benavente and Destiny Castro.<\/p>\n
CNMI 1 wasn\u2019t too shabby in the opening period, as it got 3 points apiece from Krizandra Gozon and Jamie Mendoza.<\/p>\n
The U.S. territory, however, began to pull away come the second canto, as Benavente erupted for 6 and inside player Kara Duenas added 4 to help Guam to a 37-22 advantage at the halftime break.<\/p>\n
CNMI 1 started the third with more resolve and managed to keep Guam off the boards, triggering their own fastbreak opportunities. More often than not though, those chances resulted in misfires. <\/p>\n
After keeping their deficit to the 14- to 16-point range most of the third, the wheels came off CNMI 1 in the final minutes of the period as Guam established a 67-46 advantage going into the fourth and final quarter.<\/p>\n
Duenas again submitted 6 and Rayonna shot 4 for Guam in the period, while CNMI 1 center Rachel Abrams had 8 and sharpshooter Mendoza added 7.<\/p>\n
In the fourth, Duenas went nuts from inside\u2014rolling to the basket for layups and putting back missed shots\u2014as Guam really tore the game wide open.<\/p>\n
Joylyn Pangilinan also got in on the action, firing 9 of her 12 points in the final 10 minutes as Guam went on to win by 34 points.<\/p>\n
Duenas top-scored for Guam with a game-high 27 points, while Castro and Benavente added 21 and 14 markers in support.<\/p>\n
Mendoza paced the CNMI 1 with 17, including another 7 in the payoff period, before fouling out. The team\u2019s heart and soul Liamwar Rangamar, however, was limited to 12 points.<\/p>\n
In the earlier girls game, CNMI 2 withstood Regene Palacios\u2019 37-point explosion to beat Tinian.<\/p>\n
Amazingly, all 37 points of Tinian was scored by Palacios but that wasn\u2019t enough as CNMI 2 totaled 43 as a team. The win allowed CNMI 2 to take the No. 3 seed. It was led by the 8 points apiece of Chave Alipio and Karlene Reyes. <\/p>\n
Guam 103 \u2013 Duenas 27, Castro 21, Benavente 15, Bunto 13, Pangilinan 12, Quitugua 8, Yeban 4, Rupley 2, Mendiola 1.<\/p>\n
CNMI 1 69 \u2013 Mendoza 17, Rangamar 12, Rios 11, Abrams 8, Gozon 9, Ito. 4<\/p>\n
Scoring by quarters: 18-8, 37-22, 67-46, 103-69.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guam used its height and heft advantage to the hilt in dealing CNMI 1 its first loss, 103-69, in the Micronesian Basketball Tournament, as the girls 17-and-under division wrapped up its round-robin games Wednesday night at the Marianas High School Gymnasium.<\/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-161515","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\/161515","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=161515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}