The basketballers of Maigh Cuilinn host their last Superleague game before Christmas this Saturday night as they take on UCC Demons in the Kingfisher Arena at 7pm.
Demons is one of the blue bloods of Irish basketball and the two sides have played out some epic battles over the years, both in underage national finals and on the Superleague stage.
It will undoubtedly be Demons who carry the favourite's tag on this occasion, heading into the match as they do some six places ahead of Maigh Cuilinn in the league table with the men from Galway struggling to cope with injury woes this year and looking for a first win of the season.
Given Maigh Cuilinn’s poor start to the 2022/2023 campaign, each game is beginning to take on greater importance as the now very real possibility of relegation looms large.
Demons will be no easy scalp to take but in a strange way, Maigh Cuilinn’s good overall record against the Cork outfit in years past might be the injection of confidence they need.
In a poor offensive outing last weekend, where Maigh Cuilinn failed to break 50 points and lost to University of Galway Maree 68 to 46, head coach John Cunningham must have been pleased with what was in truth an outstanding defensive performance, holding a high flying University of Galway team to under 70 points when their previous low was 89.
Demons have quality throughout their team, not least former Irish senior men’s captain Kyle Hosford who has been a true soldier for the club down the years and is still arguably playing as well this season as ever.
However, Demons do rely somewhat for scoring on their two most important import professional players, Jeremiah Moore from the USA and Tala Fam Thiam from Spain, who are combining for an average of just over 40 points per game. If Maigh Cuilinn can hold this pair in check, it will go a long way to sowing the seeds for an upset, one that Maigh Cuilinn could badly do with.
“Demons are well coached by Danny O’Mahony and have put together a really solid team, but we have been putting together good enough defensive showings so we are hard to play against, if we can just find a shooting touch we’d be right there,” says Maigh Cuilinn head coach John Cunningham.
“All of our games take on an extra importance as we, in all honesty, do now find ourselves thinking about the relegation battle and trying to find the couple of wins that might get us off the bottom of the table. Home support is massive and I have no doubt our supporters will stick with us.”
