SuperLeague Report; Maree

By moycullenbasketball on 04/10/2019

Moycullen 58 – 70 Maree

By Steven Heaney

LAST SEASON WAS one John Cunnigham and his Moycullen Superleague basketball side would probably like to forget- a couple of narrow losses against some of the league’s more beatable sides, meant Moycullen ended the season in a tough relegation battle. Luckily, they manged to void the drop, and they will be hoping to fare somewhat better this time round.

In this endeavor they will be helped by not one, but two new American recruits: Grant Olsson of Lincoln University, Missouri, and Daniel Vila of John Hopkins University.

Superleague rules mean only one American player can be on the court at any one time, but having two high-caliber players available will give Coach Cunningham some extra tactical options this year.

Pictured opposite is Joan Candon winner of our smashing McCambridge’s Hamper at the game.

We will have a number of hampers to raffle at our home games again this year courtesy of the nice people in McCambridge’s.

Many thanks to everyone in McCambridge’s for their continued support of the club and the team, we are greatly indebted to them.

This year’s first test came in the form of local rivals Maree, and unfortunately for the Connemara men, it was Maree who came put of this derby-clash on top.

In truth, this was a game in which very little went right for Moycullen- their usually solid three-point shooting was all but non-existent.

Speaking after the game, coach john Cunnigham attempted to take some positives from his team’s performance:

“While the result was hugely disappointing, I was pretty happy with our overall structure. I think we got a lot of the looks we wanted, we just had a horrible night at the offensive end of the floor,” he said.

“We shot very poorly, but the fact we were still in the game until close to the end reflected well on our defensive performance I think.

“Indeed, if we’d turned 20 secs of good defense into 24 on a few occasions, we could have stuck around that bit longer,” he dded.

Moycullen got off to slow start in the game.

Their offensive sets were working; but the shots just did not want to fall. Conor Curran carried much of Moycullen’s scoring load early on.

At the first quarter interval we had our first Nuark3PointChallenge attempt. Senan Forde from our U14 Boys team was first up and everyone in the crowd was sure that we were going to have a winner in the first game like last year. Unfortunately, it just tailed left and rimmed out. Hard luck Senan!!!

Many thanks to everyone in Nuark Ventures for their continued support of the club and the team.

The second quarter was not much better. The home side did manage to hold their opponents a modest first half scoring-output of just 36 points, but sadly, they themselves could only mange 22 points in the opening two periods.

Moycullen’s third quarter was undoubtedly their best of the game- both of Moycullen’s new American acquisitions contributed scores, as they started to chip away at Maree’s lead.

At one point the lead was reduced to four, however was as close as it got. Moycullen’s offense again began to falter. Free-throws were missed, scoring opportunities went unconverted and when Darin Johnson hit a pair of timely three-pointers, Maree killed Moycullen off.

Our U10 Boys team who played at half time

Moycullen will hope to bounce back from this rough start next week, when they make their first of many trips to Dublin this season, for a match against Pyrobel Killester.

Moycullen: Conor Curran (18), Daniel Vila (9), Grant Olsson (8), Paddy Lyons (7), Joshua Marvesely (4), Kyle Cunningham (3), Joseph Tummon (3), James Conaire (3), Paul Kelly, James Lyons, Dara Kenna.