Killester muscle in at the top table

he Big Three in women’s basketball are looking over their shoulders at a new threat in Killester. Tonight’s two Cup semi-finals should tell a tale

Now this is a proper double bill. For too long women’s basketball with its cup and league semi-finals hadn’t been able to say that. When you had just a Big Three and then everyone else, all you were literally left with was a game and a half, not two.

Any game featuring any two of UL Huskies, DCU Mercy or Glanmire was going to be more than just a game, the standard of fare the equal if not the better of anything camogie or ladies football or rugby in this country can offer.

But that still left another semi-final pairing that was more a mismatch than a match-up, a formality, over by half-time, a fourth team mere cannon fodder for the other member of the Big Three.

The grip Nadal, Federer and Djokovic had on men’s tennis for years was the nearest thing you could equate to the dominance of women’s basketball Big Three. Even tennis had an Andy Murray nudging and edging his way into that exclusive club, often beating some of its members without ever quite able to beat them all. For the past seven years women’s basketball had no Murray.

This season, this weekend, feels different. Women’s basketball has itself again a proper Cup semi-final line-up and a proper, competitive league.

It’s not that the Big Three have gone anywhere. Tonight at 8pm in the Neptune Stadium, DCU Mercy and Glanmire, once more under the banner of Team Montenotte Hotel Cork, collide.

Meanwhile, in the undercard, reigning league and Cup champions UL Huskies take to the floor at 6pm. But this time there’s no cannon fodder awaiting them. Killester are the hottest team in the league right now.

They’ve the Player of the Month in the Spaniard Laura Pardo, the third-leading rebounder in the league. Their American, Candace Bond, is the leading rebounder in the league. They’ve won their last seven games — and not just by beating anybody. In the last two months they’ve beaten both UL and Glanmire – on the road.

To put that in context, for five seasons the Big Three were only twice beaten by anyone other than themselves.

Last season there was one shock alright, Brunell from Cork tripping up DCU in a regular season game. But that was it. For three seasons the Big Three were only ever beaten by the Big Three. Over five seasons they were only beaten twice by the rest of the league. In two months Killester have taken as many scalps as the rest of the league did in five years.

It’s not just Killester that have started to rise up either. Brunell again this season have troubled DCU in both league and Cup, though falling short each time. They’re 6-3 in the league, a spot ahead of Killester, and they’ll intend to challenge for and even win titles in the seasons ahead.

Even bottom-of-the-table Liffey Celtic, who have lost all 11 of their league games this season, have got within 11 points of each of this weekend’s four semi-finalists.

So what’s changed? How have the rest got so competitive against the best?

The primary reason has been the ruling of the league and Basketball Ireland on the eve of the season to discard with a cumbersome residency rule and allow each team to field two Americans or Europeans, given there were already several American players with EU passports living in the country and some premier-league calibre American students studying over here.

Suddenly teams with only two or three quality players or scorers now have four or five legitimate threats. Their Irish players have improved from training and playing with better players. Just how sustainable some clubs will find hiring two such players over the years is debatable, but for now that influx of players and scoring power is just what the league needed.

As well as that, on some teams a core group of Irish players are coming to a level of maturity where they’re ready to contend.

Killester are a prime example of both dynamics at play. Ironically and initially the club were against the proposal of each team being allowed two imports, fearing it would make the stronger even stronger and the weaker even weak. But they’ve learned it’s been the opposite since fully embracing what they were once resisting.

Bond is scoring 16 points as well as pulling down 11.6 boards a night while the signing of Pardo has been the real catalyst behind their hot winning streak. Before her arrival in November, Killester had lost four of their first five league games.

They’ve won every game since. Talented Irish players like Mimi Clarke and Aisling Sullivan, back from an ACL injury, have been both emboldened and freed by having extra scoring power alongside them.

Since Killester last won the Cup in 2005, every national title has been the preserve of the Big Three. Their semi-final opponents, UL, have won the last eight on offer – three leagues, three regular seasons and two Cups – a run unprecedented in the history of the league.

UL might be without the retired Michelle Fahy, one of the best three post players this country has ever produced, but they are still averaging a massive 81 points a game, with Aoife McDermott and Rachel Clancy in particular showing the team’s detractors UL was always more than just the Fahy-Vanderwal Show.

But there’s a reason why DCU-Glanmire top tonight’s bill. Since the 2006 league final when each club reached their first senior national decider, they’ve been entangled in one huge tussle for supremacy. It’s like they can’t avoid meeting each other.

Last season was the sixth consecutive season they met in either the league semi-final or final. Tonight will be the sixth time in seven years they’ve clashed in either a Cup semi-final or final. They’ve split their regular season head-to-head 1-1 apiece each of the past six seasons. There are hardly two teams in high-performance Irish women’s sport that both know each other so well and are so equally matched.

Tonight’s game in particular is just a toss of a coin or ball. Glanmire are just coming off a huge league win down in UL. DCU haven’t lost since their opening game of the season against UL. They’re league leaders, without anyone seeming to notice that or that Sarah Woods has become the league’s equivalent of Paul George, blooming from fine player to top player, averaging 16.6 points a game. They’ve beaten Glanmire the past two times the sides have met.

But then that’s not necessarily a good thing. In this rivalry, it’s hard to beat the other three times on the trot. Neither of them has managed to do it over their past 15 clashes.

You can’t call it. And thankfully for the league and its Cup, you can’t call the other semi-final for sure either.