Star Of The Sea moved within one match of retaining the ESB Superleague title yesterday after defeating Notre Dame in Belfast less than 24 hours after the Dublin club had done Star a big favour by beating second-placed Waterford on Saturday evening.
Notre Dame's convincing 87-70 win over Waterford took pressure off Star who knew yesterday that they could afford to lose one of their last three games and still be sure of winning the title.
As it turned out, Notre Dame looked tired in the opening quarter yesterday, having journeyed up to Belfast in the morning.
That fatigue was evident early on as Star quickly built up a 15-point lead. But the Dubliners fought back to close the gap to seven points at the break before drawing level in the second half. Star then repelled the comeback, with John Leahy (29 pts) and Ryan Howse (22) particularly effective. Still, there were anxious moments near the end as both Howse and Javan Dupree were fouled out.
Notre Dame's player-coach Anthony Jenkins was outstanding in leading their unavailing comeback, and he scored a game-high of 36 points.
Jenkins also made a huge contribution to Notre Dame's victory on Saturday by scoring another game-high of 30 points.
The 87-70 winning margin for Notre Dame was highly flattering. Waterford, in fact, led 36-35 at half time and again led with five minutes to go.
Then Jenkins stepped up his game to land consecutive three-pointers and from there Waterford could not find a way back.
The men from the south, in their debut season in the Superleague, have now little hope of winning the title, having lost their last three games. One of those defeats was against Dublin club Marian who revived their chances of qualifying for the end-of-season national championship with a remarkable comeback win, 93-91, over Killester on Saturday.
Marian drifted somewhat aimlessly through the opening exchanges and Killester went into an early 26-9 lead. Although they had more than halved that deficit by half time, Marian were still 59-51 behind and by the end of the third quarter they were 11 points adrift.
The turning point of the closing stages was the fifth foul incurred by Killester's Mike Trimmer with five minutes remaining. Clearly unnerved by his loss, Killester found themselves back-pedalling as Marian finished strongly to take the lead for the first time with 26 seconds remaining, eventually holding on to win.
Former Neptune American Harold Joiner was the star of the Marian performance with 34 points.
That win for the south-Dubliners, coupled with an 86-70 home defeat for Neptune at the hands of Limerick, means there is in effect a three-way contest for the last two qualifying berths in the post-season championship, with Limerick holding seventh place in the table while Marian and Neptune are joint eighth.
Neptune played with only one American against Limerick and will clearly have to consider finding a replacement for Mark Robinson who was let go last week.
Also in the Superleague on Saturday, Neptune's Cork city rivals Blue Demons maintained their quest for a place in the top four by defeating Killarney 90-78, while Sligo made it two wins over the weekend by beating Dungannon 90-84 yesterday having defeated Dublin Bay Vikings on Friday night 78-76.
Vikings remain one place off the bottom after their 97-88 win over Tolka yesterday.
In the Women's Superleague, the already crowned champions Wildcats suffered only their second league defeat of the season by going down to Meteors 63-61 in Sandyford on Saturday night.
In the Inter-varsities championship at Belfield, hosts UCD beat UCC 78-63 in the men's final, helped by 24 points from Marian's Pat Glover.
University of Limerick won the women's title for the sixth time in seven years, beating DCU 65-62 in the decider.
