Future bright as basketball embraces past

It still has a heart.

And it can still stop your heart like few other sports can.

Irish basketball had one of its big weekends the one just past, with the Neptune Stadium and the Parochial Hall pulsating to the sound of music, a bouncing ball and the roars and gasps and screams and shrieks of those who were lucky enough to flock to those old basketball cathedrals on the north side of Cork for the National Cup semi-finals.