Kwesi Mugisa, Staff Reporter

Perennial rivals Urban Knights and defending champions St. George's Slayers will once again go head to head, when the Jamaica Basketball Association (JBA)/KFC National Basketball League (NBL) mid-season final tips off 7:00 p.m. at the National Arena tonight.

Having to put up with a two-week delay due to the effects of Hurricane Dean, both the Knights and Slayers, willing participants in what has become local basketball's biggest rivalry, are now simply anxious to get back down to business.

Slayers one-sided competition

With the Slayers going for their third title in a row and having won the only game the teams have played this season, the competition would seem to have been going one-sided in recent times.

However, the Knights, who won the league in 2004 and faced the Slayers in last year's final, also won last year's mid-season final and for them it is about respect.

"We need to start getting some respect, we need to redeem ourselves, get out of this groove of being mentioned as second and show our class as a top team," said Urban Knights official, Maurice Gordon.

"People have started looking at them as our stumbling block so we need to beat the Slayers and go on from there, we would rather be the bridegroom this time around, we're tired of being the best men," he added.

Remained confident

Despite losing a few of their key players - Lancelot Grandison, Gary Cummings and Shawn Jefferies - ahead of the fixture, the Slayers remain confident ahead of the game, they already have two league titles under their belt, but they would love to add the mid-season final to their growing list of accomplishments.

"We're ready for the game, we've got some training in this week and so the team is quite confident headed into today's game," explained Slayers assistant coach, Rohan Robinson.

"We lost it last year because we hadn't gelled as a team yet. That's not the case this year, the team knows what it takes and weare going for it," he added.