Conor Meany: Locals spice up Brunell, Tillman a hit for Demons
FIRST TITLE: Gurranabraher Credit Union Brunell players celebrate with the trophy after their side's victory in the Basketball Ireland Paudie O'Connor Cup Final. Pic: Seb Daly/Sportsfile
Brunell’s first Women's National Cup title was delivered in style on Sunday as they put in a brilliant offensive performance to overcome Fr Matthews. Lauren Homan was the early x-factor with her three-point shooting as Brunell mixed a dynamic inside attack with great perimeter shooting. Fr Mathews played solid defence for large parts of the game but great offence always beats good defence. It was a fitting way for Brunell to win their first trophy with Homan, Edel Thornton and Danielle O’Leary all playing brilliantly and shooting the ball so well. Liam Culloty’s recruitment has complemented his Irish core so well, Jayla Johnson scored brilliantly with 28 points, while Kyaja Johnson had an incredible 18 rebounds that put huge pressure on Fr Mathews. Brunell were full value for the win and after they enjoy this first trophy, they’ll be chasing a second in the coming months.
It wasn’t to be for Fr Mathews but they went down swinging in what turned out to be an entertaining game. Mathews had a reply to every Brunell question in the first half before they eventually ran out of steam and couldn’t keep up with a younger more dynamic Brunell team. Pat Price’s team executed their gameplan well but they'll regret some turnovers at bad times and rushing inside when they had more time. That said, they didn’t lose the game due to their own execution - Brunell simply executed better. They won't have any interest in a moral victory but Fr Mathews deserve credit for the way they went about the game and Ariel Johnson’s performance with 35 points was top-class. Ultimately Pat Price’s team needed another scorer to work alongside Johnson and they needed to find a way to slow the pace of the game, which was impossible to do as they had to chase Brunell who kept knocking down shots.
When Danny O’Mahony made the decision to change Americans again and bring in Elijah Tillman, there were a lot of question marks about whether or not the big man could deliver for Demons. The answer was a resounding yes as he put in what I considered the MVP performance (Seventh Woods and James Hannihan shared the award). His stat line of 17 points, 13 rebounds and 5 blocks is impressive, but even that doesn’t reflect the impact that he had. Tillman changed shot after shot around the basket and his presence in the key allowed Demons other defenders to guard more aggressively as they knew Ballincollig would get nothing easy if they did get into the key. Playing 35 minutes he didn’t fatigue as Demons fans might have feared and when big plays were needed down the stretch, he came up with two big baskets that helped seal the game.
Going into Saturday's Men's Cup final, I feared for Demons and how they’d deal with Ballincollig’s zone, particularly after how poor they were against Tralee’s zone last week. This time they were much better with two key adjustments standing out. The high post had a lot more variation this week with Tillman and Tala Fam both rotating through the post. Tillman was a catch and shoot threat, while Tala was aggressively looking to catch and attack which he hadn’t done last week. The most important thing for Demons though was that there was movement. Alongside the movement in the post, Demons cut well against the zone with James Beckom doing a brilliant job. It wasn’t Demons best offensive game by any stretch, but they did enough and hit shots at key moments particularly in the first half when they were hanging on.
There was so much talk of American players coming into the weekend, but it was UCC Demons' Irish role players that outperformed their Ballincollig counterparts. The Demons Irish group had 33 points between them compared to just 15 for Ballincollig’s Irish core. Beckom was a big part of that with his 13 points, as was James Hannigan who also had 13 including two big momentum-shifting threes as Demons took the lead in the third quarter. Hannigan has been brilliant this season and playing alongside Kyle Hosford and Seventh Woods has allowed him to star in his role where he knows he doesn’t have to facilitate.
I thought going into the game Kyle would have to have a big game for Demons to win, I thought he was excellent even if it didn’t show up statistically. His drive and left-handed pass off the dribble to Tillman sealed the game and was as good a play as you’ll see from any guard in the country. Overall there were contributions from everywhere as Demons made all of the hustle plays that allowed Seventh Woods and Tillman to show their quality in the big moments.
Looking back at the game, Ballincollig will have a lot of regrets, mainly around not finishing good looks. Andre Nation had a big bang in the first half, and it looked like it impacted him as he struggled to finish, even missing a wide-open layup. For Ciaran O’Sullivan the big frustration will be the wide-open shots his big men couldn’t knock down. With Demons playing more man than expected, Elijah Tillman was staying in the key to clog up the middle, daring Balincollig’s bigs to shoot them out of the strategy. Unfortunately for Ballincollig, they couldn’t with the team shooting just 4/27 from three-point range including Keelan Cairns and Niko Rosso combining to go 1/12 from deep. Once those shots weren’t dropping it emboldened Demons to stay in that defence - it was a risky strategy but one that worked. Outside of Shawndale Jones, no Ballincollig player will feel they had a good offensive game and their total of 68 was almost 20 below their league average.
Once again, the rest of the finals delivered with some brilliant moments and performances. Phoenix BC in the U18 men’s stood out as an amazing achievement. Written off before the semi-finals they managed to beat Titans and then followed it up with another big performance to top Dublin Lions. Phoenix in the group stages won two of their games by five or less, so they could easily have not even made it out of the group. To go on and perform like they did on the big stages is an amazing achievement.
Seeing Limerick Celtics win cups in both Women’s National League and U20 Men’s is a testament to the work that the club has been doing for the past decade, while Meteors defending their U18 title was a huge achievement for the south Dublin Club. The U20 Women’s overtime thriller was probably the game of the weekend as Waterford hit a late three to get to overtime before eventually winning behind Sarah Hickey's 29 points. Rebel Wheelers sealing five in a row was a great start to the weekend although Wheelchair basketball really needs a real challenger to the Cork side - hopefully South East Swifts experience at the finals helps them push on to be that team. Last, but not least, my own team UCD Marian team beating a strong Limerick Sport Eagles team was a nice moment on a great weekend of basketball.
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