Pacesetters Maree were forced to dig deep to overcome St Brendan’s Tralee by the narrowest of margins in Saturday’s division one basketball league.
In what had been expected to be an easy game for the home side, it was Tralee who raced into a 15-3 lead as Maree could not match the early pace.
Maree, however, edged into a half-time lead of 39-38 before producing their best quarter of basketball for some time. The aggressive defence was just too much for the Tralee guards, while at the other end Tomas Mitkus led the third quarter scoring with 10 points to finish 64-45 ahead.
Tralee, however, hit a trio of three-pointers without reply to narrow the gap to 12 with just two minutes to go. Amazingly Maree managed to relinquish that lead and with 20 seconds to go were two down before Finn found David Hansberry under the basket to level the game.
With two seconds left Conroy found Hansberry in the same spot with a great assist, and this time Hansberry was fouled and awarded two free throws, making one from two to hand Maree a somewhat lucky win to maintain their push to qualify for the league play-offs as top seed.
Maree: Con Crowley (4 ), Dave Hansberry (11 ), Danny Finn (16 ), Tomas Mitkus (16 ), Colm O’Hagan (11 ), Liam Conroy (9 ), Linas Mitkus (5 ), Darren Callanan, Niall Higgins, Ken Hansberry, Ciaran Harte, Brian Kelly.
