Moycullen shock the favourites

MOYCULLEN shocked the home town favourites to capture the U20 Men’s National Cup title with a stunning display Saturday.

The winners paid scant regard to the form book and produced a battling performance which had the attendance on their feet from start to finish. The win, meant a third national title for Galway following Maree’s double in the U18 grade.

Winning coach Zbigniew Mardon was thrilled with the result — and the performance: “I was brought in by the Moycullen club to improve their basketball skills and tonight that hard work has been justified. UCD had a very good team and we had to work very hard in preparing for this final. All my players should be very proud of themselves in producing such a great performance. The future is bright for Moycullen.”

The westerners enjoyed a tremendous start with Paul O’Brien and Cian Nihill helping them open a six point lead before Peter Finn led a mini-revival and cut the deficit to three points. However, Galway upped the tempo to lead 21-16 at the end of the first quarter.

The capacity attendance were treated to tremendous basketball on the restart with James Loughnane helping Moycullen extend their lead to 11 points (35-24). The westerners continued a relentless pace in the third and UCD simply could not counter the free-flowing basketball of the underdogs who surged to a 54-29 lead.

They eased to victory in the fourth with Paul Cullen named MVP.

Scorers for An Cearnóg Nua Moycullen 63 (35): (C Nihill 20, P O’Brien 14, E Maxwell 12).

Scorers for UCD Marian 45 (24): (P Finn 17, M Chubb 7, J O’Neill 7).