Toros crowned LNBP champions

Toros Nuevo Laredo has become the new champions of the Mexican LNBP league, retaining the title that the team won last in 2011. Toros rose to victory in the penultimate game of the LNBP finals series against Halcones Xalapa securing the series by 4 games to 2 with a 96-83 win.

4 time champions Halcones Xalapa were on home turf but that did not stop Toros from securing the victory that made them champions of the LNBP. The first quarter proved a tight affair as Halcones ended it with a narrow 26 to 22 margin, a lead they managed to maintain until half-time. Although by the interval Toros had closed the gap to just one point at 47-46 in favour of Halcones.

In the second half Toros found another gear and managed to open up a 5 point lead by the close of the third by leading 69 to 64. During the fourth Toros surged to victory by outscoring Halcones by 27 points to just 19.

Star of the show for Toros was American Ike Ofoegbu (205 cm, SMU’07) who shot for 30 points throughout the game. Heading the scoring charts for Halcones was LeRoy Hickerson (196 cm, Cumberlands’05) who contributed an impressive 25 points to his teams cause.

The LNBP is a part of a two league professional Basketball system in Mexico. Now that Toros has been crowned LNBP champions the Basketball fans of the country will turn their attention to the CIBACOPA which was scheduled to begin in March. However, the league organizers have recently moved the seasons start to April, and CIBACOPA general manager Jorge Leyva explained the decision to delay the season.

“The move to delay the start of Cibacopa to early April is beneficial because of the problems some teams have had in their organization, the availability of resources, not financial, but also other disposition of properties and therefore we have decided to take this action.”