![\"Cillian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/3855106_1_articleinline_Cillian_O_27Connell_2.jpg\" "\\"Cillian")
Cillian O’Connell shows his determination for St Mary’s CBS Portlaoise in the All-Ireland U\/19 A Boys School’s final last year against St. Muredach’s College \t Photo: \u00a9INPHO\/Morgan Treacy<\/p>\nCILLIAN O\u2019Connell will be making a return to international basketball having earned a late call-up to the Ireland Under 20 squad that will contest the FIBA Youth EuroBasket tournament in Bratislava next month.<\/p>\n
Having originally been named as a reserve when the panel was announced late last month, the young Portlaoise Panthers point guard was informed by head coach, Thomas Walsh, last week, that he would, in fact, be travelling with the team to Slovakia.<\/p>\n
For O\u2019Connell, who had last competed on the European stage as an Ireland Under 16 player back in 2022, the call-up came as a huge surprise.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a training session there recently and he (Walsh) just called me over and said, \u2018you’re in\u2019,\u201d O\u2019Connell told the Laois Nationalist.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like. What? I didn’t know what he meant, but he just said that I’m going to the Euros. It was kind of a shock. It caught me a bit off guard, but I was delighted,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ireland have been drawn in Group A for this year\u2019s competition and will ignite their campaign with a game against North Macedonia in the EUBA Sports Hall on Saturday 11 July.<\/p>\n
The following day they will take on Sweden, with Azerbaijan providing their opposition on Tuesday 14 July with tournament hosts, Slovakia providing the opposition the following day.<\/p>\n
Ireland will be coming into this competition bolstered by their best ever run in the Under 20 European Championship last year when they finished in seventh position, and four of those players, namely Joshua Osayanrhion, Fortune Igbokwe, Harry Scully and Declan Gbinigie were included in this year\u2019s panel at last month\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n
Delighted to be part of the travelling party to Slovakia, O\u2019Connell believes the team has the ability and the experience to deliver another strong campaign in July.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a strong team and I don’t see why we won’t have a chance to go out there and push for a winning spot,\u201d remarked O\u2019Connell.<\/p>\n
Cillian O’Connell shows his determination for St Mary’s CBS Portlaoise in the All-Ireland U\/19 A Boys School’s final last year against St. Muredach’s College \t Photo: \u00a9INPHO\/Morgan Treacy<\/p>\n
\u201cI think 10 out of the 12 of us have all played at the Euros before, and then there’s two lads getting their first caps for Ireland, so we have lads who have been there for years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI, myself, was a reserve for the Under 18s before, and I think they had the best finish that an Under 18s Irish team ever had. A lot of the same lads would be on this team now, so we’re just looking to do that again with the Under 20s.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think everybody on the team this year has played with somebody else in the team before, whether it be with Irish teams or club or whatever. Everybody knows everybody, so I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll be okay when it comes to things like team chemistry,\u201d he insisted.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Connell, himself, is looking forward to getting another crack at the European Championships, particularly in light of the fact that he and the Under 16 team with whom he travelled to the Euros four years ago faced huge challenges and did not enjoy the best of runs back then.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat year we were poor, but we had a lot of injuries over at there at the Euros,\u201d he recalled. \u201cWe had one lad with concussion, I think I missed two games and I was on restricted minutes for two games.<\/p>\n
\u201cFortune, another big player for us, was on restricted minutes for every game that tournament, so that one didn’t go as we had hoped. This year, the Under 20 Euros is very early, especially with lads coming from America and stuff, but we\u2019re hoping to do well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Connell only recently returned home from the US where he played basketball for a season in the NEPSAC AAA ranks with Lee Academy in Maine.<\/p>\n
The 19-year-old competitor relished the opportunity to travel and compete abroad, and believes the experience will certainly stand to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a good experience,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was worth it, and if I had to do it again, I definitely would.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought the level was fairly similar to Ireland, although the biggest difference was probably how athletic everybody was and it took me a couple weeks, but you settle into it after a while,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Connell has been one of Portlaoise Panthers\u2019 top emerging players over recent years and his return is a massive boost for the club\u2019s new Men\u2019s National League team head coach, Ciar\u00e1n Kiveney, who only recently took charge of the team after Jack Scully stepped down from that post.<\/p>\n
During his three years in charge, Scully led the squad to the final of both the Division One National League and National Cup, and O\u2019Connell believes it is an exciting period for the team, especially given the huge amount of home-grown talent that is coming through in Portlaoise.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m excited for the season coming up,\u201d he said. \u201cIt’s a young team, but we’ve all played together before so we can certainly gel together.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s great to see the young players starting to come through and getting those National League minutes. It’s a new look for Portlaoise, having a younger team, but we’ll have the pros coming in as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know Jayden (Umeh) was playing a good few minutes last year and hopefully Des (Ogedegbe) will make the jump now this season.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Kiv\u2019 is a very good coach. He was there as assistant coach of the National League team a couple years ago and he was also one of the coaches when I was on the Irish Under 17s team, so I know \u2018Kiv\u2019 well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CILLIAN O\u2019Connell will be making a return to international basketball having earned a late call-up to the Ireland…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-506330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506330","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=506330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}