Ballincollig 104-77 Garveys Tralee Warriors<\/p>\n
Two years after a searing defeat to their Cork neighbours UCC Demons, Ballincollig exorcised the painful experience with a 27-point rout of 2024 winners Tralee Warriors in a one-sided Domino’s MSL Cup final at the National Basketball Arena.<\/p>\n
The pattern of the game was largely determined by the whirlwind of three-pointers by the Cork side in the first quarter, with Lattrell Jossell racking up 18 points in the opening eight minutes, landing six out of his seven attempts.<\/p>\n
Keelan Cairns and Josh Steel were also on the mark with two apiece as a staggering 30 out of Ballincollig’s 34 points in that opening period rained in from outside the arc, giving the Cork men a 14-point lead at the first interval.<\/p>\n
Quarter two was strewn with errors on both sides until a frantic closing sequence saw Ballincollig build to a 60-41 advantage at the half-time break as Tralee fought hard to stay in the game, but without showing enough composure to indicate that they could temper the storm raging around them.<\/p>\n
While Jossell was quieter in that period, Josh Steel and player-coach Ciaran O’Sullivan stepped up, combining for 14 points as the Cork side took the second quarter 26-21, giving them a 60-41 half-time advantage.<\/p>\n
Tralee opened the second period with the first two scores, but their heavy deficit was a burden that forced them into half-executed plays and consequent errors as Ballincollig remained composed, never relenting in both their accuracy and self-belief that this was to be their night.<\/p>\n
When Keelan Cairns landed the last score of the third quarter almost on the buzzer – his fourth three-pointer of the game out of five attempts – it was effectively over for the beleaguered Kerry men as they found themselves all of 25 points adrift entering the final 10 minutes.<\/p>\n
As the game plodded towards an inevitable conclusion in a final quarter devoid of any shred of intensity, there was no denying that this was a ruthless plan, brilliantly executed on the court by Ballincollig and one secured effectively with that first-quarter vortex, initiated by game’s top scorer and MVP Lattrell Jossell, who finished the game on 31 points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ballincollig 104-77 Garveys Tralee Warriors Two years after a searing defeat to their Cork neighbours UCC Demons, Ballincollig…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-250429","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}