{"id":534497,"date":"2026-07-05T17:21:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T17:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/534497\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T17:21:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T17:21:11","slug":"ireland-end-fiba-eurobasket-campaign-on-high-in-baku","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/534497\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland end FIBA EuroBasket campaign on high in Baku"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Azerbaijan 70-76 Ireland<\/p>\n<p>Ireland wrapped up their FIBA EuroBasket 2029 pre-qualifying campaign with a 76-70 win against Azerbaijan in Baku, recovering from a 15-point first-half deficit to give head coach Michael Bree a first win on the road.<\/p>\n<p>Sean Flood caught fire in the second half to finish with a 25-point haul on the night Ballincollig Basketball Club&#8217;s Adrian O&#8217;Sullivan hit a milestone 50 appearances for his country, leading the team out in a hostile atmosphere in the South Caucasus.<\/p>\n<p>After going down by 15 points in the second quarter, Ireland dug deep to come away six-point winners.<\/p>\n<p>Sam Alajiki followed up his 20-point performance against North Macedonia with a 19-point display against Azerbaijan, while Ben Stevens clocked 11 points from the post.<\/p>\n<p>The win is not enough for Ireland to advance to the next phase of FIBA EuroBasket 2029 qualifying &#8211;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/sport\/basketball\/2026\/0702\/1581511-irelands-fiba-eurobasket-qualifying-hopes-end\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"> that fate was confirmed in Skopje on Thursday<\/a> &#8211; but it shouldn&#8217;t take the gloss of an important win for the programme.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I\u2019m really, really proud of all the younger boys on the team,&#8221; said Adrian O&#8217;Sullivan, who won his 50th cap in Baku.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It\u2019s their first away win in their first or second cap. I\u2019m just really proud of their effort and their grit. There\u2019s some great young players around and the future\u2019s definitely bright. If that\u2019s it from me, then what a way to go out. I\u2019m really happy for the staff and incredibly grateful for the opportunity as always.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Azerbaijan 70-76 Ireland Ireland wrapped up their FIBA EuroBasket 2029 pre-qualifying campaign with a 76-70 win against Azerbaijan&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-534497","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\/534497","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=534497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}