Basketball Ireland Super League (overtime)
Neptune 87 Belfast Star 79
Belfast Star will be hoping to break their duck when they host Demons at the New Forge Complex on Saturday night following back-to-back defeats in the All Ireland SuperLeague.
After losing to Neptune on the opening night of the new season, Star suffered a heartbreaking 87-79 over-time loss away to Ballincollig on Saturday night despite a top display from American TC Fields who had 38 points and 14 rebounds.
Unfortunately for Star their next highest scorers were captain Conor Quinn and Max Richardson on 10 points each with six and eight rebounds, respectively. American Maurice Jones only had nine points – five of those in the first quarter - and English professional Max Cooper failed to register a basket.
It has been a tough start to the campaign for new coach Rafi Olmassakian who had demanded they improve in defence after the loss to Neptune and in the early stages Star showed they were better organised when they went 20-10 up at the end of the first quarter. Fields and Jones scored eight and five points while Richardson and Cooper were very good around the boards.
Star continued to control the game in the second quarter. Fields took his first galf tally to 20 points and there was a good five-point contribution from Oisin Kerlin which helped the Belfast men lead at the break 45-36.
But worryingly for coach Olmassakian, Star’s level dropped in the third quarter which they lost 26-13. Trailing by four going into the final quarter they fought back and with two-and-a-half minutes remaining of normal time Fields scored one of two free throw attempts to tie it all up at 70-70.
Down by two after a Ronan O’Sullivan basket with four seconds remaining, Star were thrown a lifeline when Richardson scored to send the game into five minutes of overtime. It seemed like Star were now ready to go on a claim a big win on the road but instead the wheels fell off as their offence dried up and they were severely punished. Ballincollig’s Todd Jake Wolfe (24pts), Jordan Rawls (27pts) and Joshua Tomaic (16pts) doing the damage. Star could only manage two points in the final three minutes.
Coach Olmassakian said: “We had a very good chat about what happened and the lads are ready to re-group and go again in the match with Demons. We have to learn from this and we simply have to be better at shooting the ball. The stats will show that we had so many chances that were not taken.
“I just feel that we gave this game away, we gave Ballincollig the win. At crucial times we had too many turnovers and that was seen a lot in the third quarter. But we also didn’t shoot the ball well. We had so many chances and didn’t take them and you can’t expect to win basketball games if you’re doing that. We have to address it so I’m looking to organise extra shooting sessions this week.
“In practice we had been shooting well but in the game we didn’t see that so we will work hard on that this week. Last weekend I said that we had to improve defensively and we worked a lot on communication and I could see that paid off because we were a lot better in that area. In the first half we only gave up 36 points which was very good but then we had that bad third quarter which hurt us a lot.
“We did put ourselves back in the game, we gave ourselves that second chance but in the over-time we didn’t take it.”
