The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Weakened Warriors shine
THE Tralee Sports Complex bounced to a familiar beat last Saturday evening with the return of Superleague Basketball to the Kingdom.
A capacity crowd watched Tralee Warriors stage a late rally to overcome Belfast Star 63-56 in a contest that quality-wise didn’t always scale supreme heights, but in terms of excitement due to the closeness of the scores it provided full value for a hugely enthusiastic and vocal home support.
Without both Kieran Donaghy and Goran Pantovic, Warriors were playing catch up for long periods, even if there was always just a marginal scoring difference between the sides, but when they needed to increase the effort and up the tempo in the final quarter they were well equal to the task, with their defensive input crucial to the outcome.
Given the absentees, it was always going to be difficult for Warriors, with the Belfast side having won their opening League game, and finishing mid table in last season’s Superleague.
It was nip and tuck throughout a pretty tentative opening quarter with American Trae Pemberton introduced off the bench at the midway point. However, Grey Womack made the most significant input during this period scoring 12 points for the visitors that included three three-point scores.
It ensured that the visitors led 16-14, at the end of that first quarter. Womack sat out most of the second, and with 6’ 11” Dusan Bogdanovic influential under both baskets, and scoring eight points during this period.
Warriors were level at half-way, and with Trae Pemberton shooting a three Warriors opened up a seven-point lead. However, with seven different scorers contributing for Star, they overhauled that deficit and retired for the interval four points in front, 35-31, with Womack and Bogdanovic sharing the scoring honours for the respective teams on 12 points apiece.
Teenager Ryan Leonard, impressive throughout and finishing with 17 points and four rebounds to his credit, converted an early basket for Warriors on the restart, and with Darren O’Sullivan also contributing greatly, ultimately finishing with eight rebounds and displaying tremendous endeavour in all quarters of the court, Warriors kept pace.
Three-point scores from McGaharan, Cairns and Womack during this quarter ensured that Star retained a slender 49-47 lead going into the fourth and final quarter. Some tremendous defending, which resulted in Star, not scoring for the opening five minutes in the final quarter, provided the platform for Warriors to open up a significant scoring gap, being 57-49 in front with just under six minutes left on the clock.
Leonard with seven points and Bogdanovic with eight in this quarter ensured that Warriors were always dictating matters going down the stretch, and, once they got their noses in front, they controlled matters in the final few minutes to complete a first ever win for them in the Superleague.
In terms of statistics, Bogdanovic topped the list with twenty six points and twelve rebounds, but such was the occasion with Tralee welcoming top flight Basketball back to the town, the result rather than the performance was all important. The bench was used rather sparingly, with Darragh O’Hanlon, in particular, making a notable input at varying intervals.
Certainly not the perfect performance, but, one which was extremely important, which was fully acknowledged by the team coach Mark Bernsen.
“We are still a work in progress, we didn’t have everybody on the floor, which we wanted to. We had one guy [Trae Pemberton] coming off an injury, and he played more minutes than I anticipated.
“Dusan [Bogdanovic] didn’t come out of the gam, so we were a little tired, a little sluggish, but we got a win, showed a little bit of character, they helped each other. But there was a situation where free throws were poor in the first game, they were poor again tonight, and we can’t shoot free throws like that. We have to getbetter.
“Our defence won the game for us, we didn’t shoot the ball very well at all, and in fact our short selection wasn’t very good at times, so our defence had to react to our poor offence. Conversely our defence got us some good offence, we got the ball off the boards and ran.
“I am real proud of them, the result was everything.
“We had to get a result and we did, they did a great job. Every week we want to get a little better, the challenge is now can we go on the road and win, so every night we go out there’s a new challenge.”
Warriors travel to Dublin on this coming weekend to take on KUBS in the Carroll Arena in Greendale on Saturday, with tip off at 8pm. Their next home game in the Complex is in the National Cup against Swords Thunder on October 22.