Mixed weekend for both men's and women's Cork SuperLeague basketball teams

It was another mixed weekend for Cork teams in the Men’s Super League with the champions UCC Demons suffering their second loss on the bounce at Tralee Warriors.

Demons started the season with the American pairing of Shariff Black and Zach Hinton and talk from the preseason games suggested they would go close again to retaining their title.

Tala Fam returned Germany to replace Toby Christensen but after three games into the season they find themselves 1/3.

As predicted in this column about the Blue Demons club they are never slow to pull the trigger and they did so last week when Zach Hinton was informed, he wasn’t a right fit for the team.

Hinton returned to the States yesterday with his fellow American Shariff Black possibly lucky that he wasn’t the player to be shown the door.

In his last two games Black has only contributed 29 points with only 13 coming in their latest defeat at Tralee Warriors.

The stats of Black against Tralee will worry his coach Danny O’Mahony as he had only 4/14 inside the arc and 0/5 outside the paint.

Credit to coach Danny O’Mahony his recruiting of professionals since taking the job has been impeccable as who could forget M J Randolph, Seventh Woods, Elijah Tillman and Patrick Robinson.

Next weekend Demons new signing Jarvis Doles will get a tough baptism when his side host championship favourites Killester on Sunday before travelling to the capital on Bank Holiday Monday for a tricky away game to UCD Marian.

The present problem for Demons is they are struggling in the offence court and outside of their Americans non-existent in that department their Irish players are simply not doing the business.

The Cork derby between Energywise Ireland Neptune and Ballincollig was another damp squib for the Neptune fans.

Last week Neptune brought in the former Killester and Tralee Warriors bosman Greg Adon and there is little doubt when he gets up to speed, he will help them.

The problem for Neptune just like Demons is their American duo of Cameron Glover only chipped in with 11 points with his partner Zion Dobbs registering 13.

On the bosman front Adon and Joe Junior- Muvezolo had 20 points each that suggests they could well remove one of their Americans.

Recruiting professionals needs to be right and although clubs do their best to get the right fit Neptune signing two guards and relying on Eoin Nelson their 6’-10’ signing from UCD Marian is not what the doctor ordered.

No problems on the professional front for Ballincollig as their trio Latavious Mitchell (38), Latrell Josell (23) and Josh Steel (18) gave them a 79- point tally that Neptune failed to shut down.

In fairness, Ballincollig look structured as player coach Ciaran O’Sullivan had them well set up in defence and he will be hoping they can build on this win with a home game looming against UCD Marian at the GCU Arena on Saturday.

In the Women’s Super League UCC Glanmire secured their first win of the season when securing an impressive 76-64 win over Flomax Liffey Celtics at the Mardyke Arena.

Glanmire welcomed back Claire O’Sullivan and were full value for their 16-10 opening quarter lead.

The tempo increased in the second and the Kildare side battled hard to edge it 19-18 with Glanmire still five points to the good at the break.

The trend didn’t change on the restart and with Americans Jewel Watkins (33) and Viane Cumber (14) showing their class they were full value to take an eight- point lead into the final quarter.

Coming down the stretch Glanmire stayed in control and despite a brave Liffey performance the Cork side secured the win in style.