Recap
Kennington Generals came out on top against the talented Hackney Jedi’s by a score of 18-15 in U12 CBL action at the JFS on Sunday.
Both teams featured some of the best talent in the division, with the mercurial Dean DJ DeFreitas-Smith running the show for Hackney and Diego Compus-Peck leading the charge for the Generals. However, it was Kennington’s overall team defense that got them the win in this intense game of end to end action, as the young Generals did a good job on locking in on the free-scoring De Freitas-Smith.
De Freitas-Smith is a fast rising future star, who has an advanced basketball IQ for his age, good handle and the ability to shoot consistently out to beyond 3 (yes, he’s still just 11…) and was able to still finish with 12 of his teams 15 points. However the smothering team and individual defense from the Generals, most notably from the long-armed Omar Williams, made every shot difficult and prevented De Freitas-Smith from ever really getting into his usual groove.
Compus-Peck led the way on offense for Kennington with 12 points, cutting through the Jedi’s defense with his hard-to-guard handle and high-arcing layups which found the bottom of the net time and time again. In sealing the win for the Generals, his coach Jesus DaSantos had ample praise for the promising youngster: “Diego is so talented, we get to see him do that kind of thing every practise and he’s a joy to coach. Overall we played better today as a team too. Our spacing was good and we communicated well on defense. Those factors alongside Diego’s play were the keys to this victory over a very good Hackney team”.
