In another high scoring affair on Saturday night in the Kingfisher gym, SSE Renewables Moycullen just came up short against Belfast Star in what was an entertaining and fast paced Premier League game. Despite a tough week of preparation through injury and illness, the home team started off brightly and opened up an early lead mainly through some excellent finishing from Mike Callaghan and aggressive guard play through Tomas Gilson, who continues to impress in his debut season. However, with their American and Spanish imports proving to be menaces on the boards, a string of offensive rebounds from the visitors kept them in touch and meant that what should have been a comfortable lead never materialised for SSE Renewables Moycullen.
With the two big imports wrecking havoc inside this opened up the court for Star’s Paul Dick & while the team did a good job making him work for every score, the Northerners shooters were finding their range with ruthless efficiency from outside to take the lead early in the 2nd quarter.
Callaghan was once again the main scoring threat for SSE Renewables and despite repeatedly being on the receiving end of tough physical defense he still managed to find a way to score. With Dylan Cunningham once again assisting Callaghan on the scoring charts, their joint effort meant that the home team was always in contention and only down by 3 points going into the half.
While the home team had a solid start to the 3rd quarter, once again offensive rebounds proved to be their Achilles heel with Star picking up scores time and time again from these rebounds. With the visitors focusing heir defense on stopping Callaghan & Cunningham, SSE Renewables needed some shots to drop; up stepped Eoghan Maxwell to hit some crucial scores to reduce the gap that was beginning to grow.
With Darragh Mulkerrins, who once again was playing way beyond his years, playing suffocating defense on the Star guards the home team was able to keep that gap to a reasonable margin and give themselves hope going into the last quarter. Unfortunately a devastating 3-minute spell midway through the 4th quarter from Star had the home team chasing the visitors for the remainder of the game. Try as they did, SSE Renewables Moycullen were never able to sufficiently eat into the lead and with Callaghan once again getting no calls despite seeing some very physical defense, Star were able to see out the game.
While SSE Renewables Moycullen are beginning to find their scoring touch, their normal stingy defense has been porous to say the least in the games since Christmas. While they need to maintain this scoring rate, the points conceded needs to drop substantially and while this is a tough balance it is nevertheless well within the team to achieve this.
Next up is another home game against Templegoue from Dublin. SSE Renewables Moycullen will be hoping for a repeat of the result when the teams last met in November in the Oblate Hall when they won a tight contest by 6 points.
Tip-off is 6:30 pm in the Kingfisher on next Saturday.
Mike Callaghan 27, Dylan Cunningham 27, Eoghan Maxwell 7, Paul O’Brien 7, Darragh Mulkerrins 5, Stephen O’Brien 5, Ronan O’Sullivan 2, Tomas Gilson 2, Ian Burke, Nollaig Cunningham.
Categories: Men's Superleague
CC Mhaigh Cuilinn 