Very little between Warriors and Killester for place in final
MEN’S NATIONAL CUP SEMI-FINAL
Tralee Warriors v Killester
Saturday, January 12 Mardyke Arena, Cork Tip-off at 8pm
IT promises to be a bumper weekend of basketball down by the Lee this weekend with the Basketball Ireland Cup semi-finals taking place in the Mardyke Arena and Neptune Stadium in Cork.
Kerry interest in the penultimate stages is fairly limited this year with just one team from the Kingdom qualified for the semi-finals, but it doesn’t get much bigger for Garvey’s Tralee Warriors who take on Pyrobel Killester in the Pat Duffy Men’s National Cup.
It goes without saying that this is a huge fixture for the Tralee club, who are enjoying a decent vein of form right now. They head to Cork on the back of a fine derby win over Killorglin in the league, but they are certain to meet a far tougher test from the Dublin club on Saturday evening.
Killester sit just above the Warriors in the Superleague table in third place, but both teams have 24 points and only Killester’s marginally better points difference (63 against 58) has them ahead of Pat Price’s team.
There was little to separate the teams when they met in the Superleague in early November, with Killester edging victory by 86-82 in a hard-fought game in Clontarf.
The Dublin club will look to Royce Williams, Alex Herreros, Ciaran Roe and Luis Garcia Hoyos for the bulk of their scoring, and it was American Williams’ 29 points that played a significant part in Killester’s league win over Warriors in November.
Andrew McGeever hit back to back three-pointers in that game while Paddy Sullivan and Michael Westbrooks are others who can be relied on to make significant contributions.
The Warriors are coming to this game on the back of five consecutive Superleague wins and as usual they will look to Kieran Donaghy, Darragh O’Hanlon, Jordan Evans, Eoin Quigley, Dusan Bogdanovic, Janis Dumburs, the excellent Paul Dick, the recently arrived American Keith Jumper and the O’Sullivan brothers, Fergal and Darren, to get them to their first National Cup final as the Tralee Warriors.