Giant-killing Elks still work in progress, says Brennan
Elks, comprised predominantly of UUJ students, caused a major upset when they dumped neighbours Belfast Star out of the Cup and followed that up with a shock defeat of DCU Saints, one of the most decorated sides in Irish basketball, in the Super League and tomorrow they will contest a national cup semi-final for the first time in the history of the club.
Coach Brennan starred with Sporting Belfast during her playing days and her husband, Gareth Maguire, is a former Irish international who played in five semi-finals and four finals with Star.
“This is a huge game — the biggest game for the college,” she said. “We did not underestimate the challenge of moving a collegiate team into the Super League and it is still a work in progress.
“It was all about not getting blown out and learning how to win something because while you can get into the habit of winning you can also get into the habit of losing.
“Being a collegiate side means that we have a huge turnover of players every year — we use international scholarships to get players to come — so from that point of view it is a great achievement for the guys to get to the semi final.”
And she feels they are in with a chance on the formline that saw them beat DCU Saints and Belfast Star – the only two teams in the country to beat the defending champions, 11890 Killester, since they won the cup last year.
“Our problem is that we are very inconsistent and we need to get consistency if we are going to be a competitive force. We are still working on that. It is still all a learning experience for us.”
They have an exciting young American in Ben De La Cruz who played NCAA Div 2 basketball with Flagler University and was named on the All Region team in his senior year before coming to Jordanstown to do his masters and the coach predicts his performance could impact tomorrow’s outcome.
“Ben is a very unselfish player and there are times when I wish he would finish himself and not lay it off to a team mate but coming from a (US) collegiate background it is instinctive for him to share the ball.
“I am trying to encourage him to finish more – he is a great team player but I need him to finish more because I don’t have eight or nine on my bench who can score. There are four guys who are going to do the scoring. “We need to recognise our weakness and play to our strengths. In any of our games we have always been able to score enough points to win a game — 80 points should win any Super League game – but we are letting teams score more than us. The problem is our defensive boards and that is something we need to correct.”
Ciarán McEvilly, a former UCD player, passed a fitness test on Wednesday and Brennan is hoping he will be 80% for the game while the availability of her starting point guard, Barry Drumm, will depend on a late fitness test.
In their last visit to Neptune Stadium they took a drubbing from the home side but she is willing to put that down to inexperience.
“I was disappointed with the performance but at least we have the experience of having played in the Stadium,” she said. “We played very, very well against Killester and lost but then Killester have so much talent they could win the league without any American.
“I have every belief we can win (on Sunday) but we have to play well. We are not good enough to be able to afford to not play well and win. We need Kevin Foley, Ciarán McEvilly and Barry Drumm to be fit and we need a big game from Ben De La Cruz.
“The guys have been in exams all week so it’s not great time to be facing into a Cup semi-final but the exams will be over by the final.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
