Mayo basketball club face showdown after defeat

At the end the more experienced basketball team got the job done. Merry Monk Ballina were on a roll, with four league wins in a row and seemed ready to topple the unbeaten Tralee Warriors. The Mayo team, which relies heavily upon young talent, ran the visitors from Kerry close, but eventually the Warriors prevailed 74-66.

Ballina were down by 17 points at one stage and battled back to a one point deficit in the third quarter before misfortune came their way. “One of our lads went down, shot a mid-range, and it just ricocheted in and out, they got the rebound, went down, shot a three, and then they kind of pulled away a bit again then. But the lads fought very, very hard, dived on balls, going for rebounds,” Ballina head coach Derek Cunningham told The Mayo News.

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“We knew it was going to be a big task. Tralee were unbeaten. I watched some of their tapes. They're very well coached, very disciplined and we knew it was going to be tough. So we focused, a lot of our game on our defence,” Cuningham explained.  

Yet, the challenge ahead for Ballina seemed like fighting the ancient monster hydra: Every time you chopped off one of its multiple heads, the hydra would regrow two new heads. Tralee Warriors are deadly shooters, so Ballina knew they couldn't efficiently play a zone defence against them. But then, the Kerry men are dangerous putting the ball on the floor too, so Ballina would have to make sure to seal off driving lanes to the basket.

However, even that wouldn't cancel out the multiple threats the Warriors posed, as their big men were strong and agile under the basket and couldn't be forgotten about either. “They had a lot of depth, their coach was good, they ran their bench very well. We were aware of all this before the game, but on the night now, they were better than us,” admitted Cunningham.

Ballina did extremely well, holding the Warriors to only 74 points, which is their lowest offensive output of the season so far. It was the offense eventually that lost the game for Merry Monk. 

Tralee were good defensively too, they were a bit bigger, stronger than Ballina's younger lads.  Experienced playmaker Ronan McGarrity had a great game for Ballina, he finished with 27. But it wasn't enough. 

They focused a lot on him defensively, and we just couldn't get shots dropped, we only scored 28 in the first half, which was very low. We just couldn't get things going offensively,” analysed Cunningham.

Looking at the age structure of both teams, while Ballina field many U-20 players, Tralee Warriors have a more settled squad with mid-20 year-olds who are simply more experienced and more physical. The top scorers for Ballina were playmaker Ronan McGarrity (27), Theo Daly (17) and Mark Cunningham (9).

The defeat for Ballina means, that their chances of finishing the league in the top two have diminished. Currently Merry Monk rank third in the Basketball Ireland Development League (BIDL).

The only two teams to beat them are ahead of them. The are two clear objectives for next weekend's final matchday: Firstly, Ballina will have to win their home match against Atlantic Eagles. Secondly, their county rivals Mayo Meteors will have to do them a favour in beating second placed Limerick Celtics. Both matches tip off on Saturday, March 1 at 7pm.

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