Basketball: Coach happy as Scruffy’s come good to beat Dynamos

SCRUFFY’S St. Paul’s qualified for the semi-final stages and a clash with the three time winners, Bausch & Lomb Wildcats after an impressive 77-67 victory over XLR8 Auto Drimnagh Dynamos in an exciting quarter final of the ESB Women’s Cup in Killarney.

The performance left Coach James Weldon a happy man after a season of highs and lows.

“To be honest this was a make or break thing for us,” he admitted. “And it was the first time all season that we played at a unit. While there is still room for a lot of improvement I feel we got it right this time and we got it right at the right time.”

Scruffy’s opened up an early lead of 22-11 and, from this platform, they never looked back.

The Dublin side cut the deficit to three points in the final quarter but a big three pointer from Diane Griffin restored confidence.

“We did very well in the league last year when we were in there for the first time but I think that maybe we put too much pressure on ourselves this year and things went a bit off course,” Weldon said.

“But now we have Diane Griffin back scoring - she hit 26 points in this game - and our American Sara Cartmil is playing well. We have stepped things up defensively and I think that laid the foundations for this victory.

“And it was a victory that we needed. I think that if we did not make it to the semi-finals and, looking at where we are now in the league, it would have been very difficult to motivate the girls.

“But now we play Wildcats in the semi-finals and already everyone is looking forward to that game.”

Bausch & Lomb Wildcats had a facile win over Galway to make it through to another Cup final weekend while Killester defeated Meteors 73-66 for their place in the finals, following a superb 33 point contribution from Suzanne Maguire.

Maguire hit all 11 points for Killester in the opening quarter, trailing 11-16 following a superb quarter from Meteors Catherine O’Sullivan. Killester came back in the second quarter to lead 34-32 at half time and took control in the third quarter.

The winners of that game play the defending champions, University of Limerick, in their semi-final.

At the weekend UL had to work hard for their 73-63 victory over gallant SuperLeague rookies, Vienna Woods Glanmire at Little Island where it took two quick three pointers from Michelle Aspell in the closing minutes to put the result beyond doubt.

“To be honest Glanmire put up a great fight,” UL Coach, Tony Hehir, said: “They hustled for everything and we never really settled down.

"They hit some outstanding shots. We were up in the first quarter, but Glanmire pulled away and they were seven points up at half time, 36-29, and, I must admit, there some worried faces in the crowd.”