Sanatura 96 PZ 85

Games at Perez Zeledon require a three hour road trip over Cerro de la Muerte at three thousand meters of altitude. PZ schedules their weekend games on Fridays which forces players to scramble to get out of work early. Since most players in our league are not full time basketball players, it's not uncommon for players to miss the game if they can't get out of work. One time I ended up with only eight guys making the trip; we won by a comfortable margin but every foul call pushed us closer to the edge. So every time you go to PZ, the first challenge is purely logistical.



This was a test of our depth; we were missing four guys from our regular rotation. Perez Zeledon's position at the bottom of the table belies this team's quality. Jackie Acuña, the league's leading three point shooter, has recovered his shooting touch from year's past. At point guard they have Dominican Cesar Chavez who played a brief stint at FIU in Miami. And since our last meeting they have swapped out American big men, bringing in an athletic New Yorker in D'Andre Brown.

We started out with a strong first quarter building a comfortable fifteen point lead off solid defense and fast breaks. PZ closed the gap during the first stretch of our Sub 21 minutes. Our regular sub-21 player was unavailable for the game, so we went with Kevin Davis and Pablo Munoz (affectionately known as Puyol) in his place. We were able to maintain a double digit lead going into halftime.

Jackie, who had only eight points in the first half, got going in the second half. He's so dangerous on his home court. First, cause he shoots very well there. Second because he gets every call down there. At one point he drew a foul call and then we got Jaythiev called for a technical, which meant four free throws and the ball, on which they converted a three pointer. So what was a comfortable thirteen point lead, all of a sudden became a six point game with a hot Jackie hitting shots all over the place.

Last time it was Michael who answered the call, scoring 36 points. This time we countered with a combination of inside points from David Carnegie and some hot shooting from Henry. We were able to get the lead back up to double digits and clung to that margin til the end of the game.

Game Notes

• David Carnegie scored a season high 26 points. PZ doesn't have a lot of height so David was able to get his way inside.
• Pablo Munoz made his First Division debut with a three minute stint. Kevin Davis played seven minutes in the second half.
• We got back to San Jose at 3 AM. Very brutal trip.
• There were some interesting results around the league on Friday: San Ramon 72 Limon 71, Escazu 72 Liceo 66. San Ramon made the winning basket with four seconds to go. Escazu is playing with some confidence while that Liceo team is really struggling.