After the loss of last week’s opening top-flight fixtures to Storm Austen, the brand-new team overthrew reigning champions Skipton 81-63 in the division’s belated opener on Wednesday night.

After juggling playing, captaincy and coaching, the evergreen Paul Van Beek welcomed this strong start to their campaign in this four-team top flight.

‘Great team effort and I’m delighted to start that way and get a convincing lead and get a good win,’ he said.

‘They will be back next game – it will be different.’

Agents wasted no time gelling in this early-season indicator match at Beau Sejour.

Having inherited the potent sibling pair of Dan Marriott and Harry Gent from Skipton, but displaying plenty of strength in depth beyond that, they barrelled through the first quarter with an 18-7 lead.

Young Dan Aviso had opened Agents’ scoring with a three-pointer and continued to prove his worth against established opposition, making up squarely half of his team’s scoring in this period.

Aaron Walden’s side relied on their three-point scoring to keep pace in the second quarter, with Blake Carre, Max Hamon and Paul Wilkes landing two apiece to work around the men in green’s physical dominance of the paint.

Although that quarter proved much more closely contested, Agents still hit half-time with a relatively comfortable lead, making it 46-31.

Skipton nevertheless threatened to claw it back during quarter three.

Even if Agents did hold the claim of winning every quarter, they only did so narrowly, edging the final two periods with scores of 19-17 and 16-15.

Their 46-year-old coach has highlighted the age range of this new squad, being three decades the senior of their youngest player – basketballer and golfer Harry Ingrouille.

Also among the Agents’ ranks are a strong contingent of players that have recently been representing the island at U21 level.

A promising start it has been, though Van Beek does not want to get ahead of himself.

‘We’re going to take it one game at a time,’ he said.

‘You never know, as it’s a smaller league in a smaller island.’

The availability of Dan Marriott, the team’s ‘anchor’ in Van Beek’s words, around his shift work could prove pivotal.

‘If we can keep that eight or nine players a game, we’ve got a good chance.’

Aviso earned MVP for the victors and also dominated the scoreboards with 26 total points, beyond the double-digit contributions of Gent (17), Marriott (13) and Dan Naftel (10).

Carre headed Skipton’s scoring on 14 points – led by his trio of ‘threes’ in the first half – followed by Walden on 11.

In the Women’s Division earlier that evening, reigning champions Imperium Comets emerged convincing victors against KPMG Pumas.

The re-kitted blues owed much of their 67-22 scoreline to a phenomenal second-half defensive performance in which they almost completely starved their opponents of baskets, conceding just a single three-pointer from Donna Brehaut.

The first half proved much more competitive.

Comets edged through the opening quarter with an 18-14 lead, garnished by two three-pointers and some impeccable free-throwing from the highly-skilled Ieva Babina.

Pumas, featuring many players who would be equally at home on the netball court, had produced a solid team performance to stay in touch to that point, but after a relatively modest lead of 27-19 at half-time, Comets shifted their defence and made life very difficult for their rivals.

They dominated the following period 19-3 before an impeccable 21-0 finish. Some handy turnovers in that final quarter gave them welcome fast-break opportunities on which they duly capitalised.

The champions’ already-impressive armoury has been strengthened further through young Grace Ogier and impressive new arrival Adeyosola Adelekan, who joined forces with captain Emilie Batiste to blow out the scoreline in the final quarter.

With that Adelekan brought her individual tally to a leading 15 points, edging out Babina by two, while Batiste’s 11 on top of her wider contributions earned her MVP.

Batiste has credited the new arrivals for bringing ‘great depth and energy to the team’ and next July’s Island Games for helping motivate the players further.

She has welcomed another strong early-season performance from her side.

‘We were really pleased to come away with the win,’ she said.

‘It felt like a game of two halves. The first quarter was closely-contested, but after making a defensive change, the game started to swing in our favour.

‘The team worked incredibly hard on defence ... I’ve always believed that strong defence wins games, and last night was a great example of that.’

Kat Reynolds topped Pumas’ scoring with her six-point haul from the opening quarter.