Busy Bank Holiday as Cork basketball sides face into double-header weekend

The dreaded double header weekend for all three Cork teams in the Men’s Super League that ensures another interesting round four of fixtures.

Ballincollig will get proceedings rolling tomorrow when they entertain UCD Marian at the GCU Arena in Gurranabraher with their home venue at MTU unavailable. Ballincollig played some quality basketball at times against Neptune last weekend and player-coach Ciaran O’Sullivan will be under no illusions that this will be a tougher test.

The one plus for Ballincollig is that their three professionals Latavious Mitchell, Latrell Jossell and Josh Steel are consistently putting up good numbers with 79 points out of their 108 tally against Neptune. Another positive is Ronan O’Sullivan and Dylan could be available to return and that will be a huge boost.

On Monday, Ballincollig travel to play Killester at Clontarf. The UCD coach Ioannis Liapakis has a good solid American pairing in Joshua Reynolds and Tanner Graham and with some solid Irish players they are bound to test Ballincollig.

Energywise Ireland Neptune are still awaiting their first win of the season and it doesn’t get any easier when Dublin side Eanna are in town.

Eanna produced a season best in their second game of the season when defeating championship Killester away by 11 points and they will have no fear coming to play Neptune.

The Dublin outfit followed up last weekend with another huge win over St Vincent’s Dublin.

Cork-born Irish international Sean Jenkins missed that win but is expected to return for this game.

Neptune are presently stacked with professionals with two Americans and two Bosmans. Whether that will change in the coming days remains to be seen.

New Bosman signing Greg Adon is quality and should help them going forward but coach Keith Daly needs to bring structure to his team at both ends of the court. In defence the players are all at sea as when you give up 62 points in a half you are doing something seriously wrong.

It gets worse in the offence court as no plays are being run and that needs to change as coach Daly looks as if he is hoping for something to happen.

FIRE

What really stood out for me about this Neptune team in their three games that I have witnessed is the lack of fire in their bellies and that needs to return sooner than later.

Eanna are a well- structured their team and will expose Neptune if they haven’t the bottle for the battle and they could well be 0/4 going into Monday’s game at Limerick Celtics.

UCC Demons' season to date has come as a shock to the system as they have lost their last two games to Kerry opposition, Killorglin at home and away to Tralee Warriors.

American Zach Hinton was shown the door last weekend and is replaced by the former Tralee Warriors ace Jarvis Doles.

Hinton finished with 18 points against Tralee but his American partner Shariff Black only contributed 13. His recent displays will need to pick up big time.

In my book, when Demons were successful, they had leaders on court, particularly in American Elijah Tillman and Kyle Hosford. In their opening three games Demons were leaderless and indeed some of the Irish players are struggling with their form.

Since the foundation of Blue Demons who will celebrate their 60th anniversary next year togetherness was always a priority with every team that represented them at the top tier of Irish basketball. The motto in their camp was always ‘we’ and not ‘I’ and this must return quickly or they could be facing a long winter.

Killester are a class outfit and in Paul Dick possess the jewel in the crown. Demons battled hard with Killester last season with the sides sharing two games each and no doubt the Mardyke Arena will be buzzing on Sunday.

On Monday Demons face a tricky trip to Dublin to face UCD Marian.