05/13/2003 Nuttin' but net for Swish Unit

North West London boys "Swish Unit" reigned supreme at the And1.co.uk 3 on 3 tournament in Southall.

But "Dunk Unit" might have been a more suitable name - Jerome Jack was throwing down all over defenders, practically at will.

I knew there'd been a lot of interest about this tourney. After putting a pop-up page advertising it on this site, I was told by organiser Sapuran Gill that he'd been overwhelmed by the number of applications he'd received.

However, I did not think the standard would be as high as it was. I was impressed with a lot of the young ballers.

Amongst the strong teams were Swish Unit (led by North West London Wolverine Jerome Jack), Brixton (led by Streetball.co.uk's long-time bredren Matthew Bryan) and Streetballzone (featuring their site's webmaster, Josh Igoe, plus a kid called Jamie who'd travelled all the way down from Scotland!!)

There were some other good teams - Enfield was one, but I don't know the names of the others!!

Things started off with teams playing full court 3 on 3 games (the courts were small, don't worry!), first to three points.
How squads did in that session determined whether or not they'd make the playoffs.

During those games, Matthew Bryan set the tone...coming with CRAZY moves.
I remember this time last year he had the handle, but not the hops. Well, what a difference one season can make when you're that age. The yout was dunking all over heads! Jerome was doing the same.

Streetballzone had a few little flashes of handle. Their big man got a couple of dunks too.
Later on, Jamie got hot and started showing some serious range on his jumpshot. Hard to judge having just seen the kid once, but it certainly looked like he could ball (by the way, he's in the And1: Ball Access video...see if you can spot him).

In the playoffs, Streetballzone eliminated Brixton. I think Matthew and his crew spent too much time worrying about pulling moves early on, then found themselves in a hole they couldn't get out of.

However, Matthew did get the play of the day. He gave SBZ's big guy one of those Jordan shot-fakes (where you act like you're going to shoot but grip the ball in your hand instead of letting it fly).
The defender turned to follow the shot. As he realised he'd been done, Matthew blew by him and stuffed it on his head.

Then, adding insult to injury, he grabbed the boy up and started talking in his face!

The game was delayed when Jamie got bust in the nose and started bleeding.
When it resumed he sealed Brixton's fate when he gave Matthew a nice head-fake, giving him the step he needed to get to the hole for the layup.

SBZ proved no match for Swish Unit though, going out 12 - 3.

In the final, Jerome kept killing it with the dunks and Swish Unit took the title.

Well done to all those involved and Coach Gill.

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