Moycullen hope to welcome back top scorer Luke Enos to the line-up this weekend when they travel north to face a resurgent Belfast Star in Saturday night’s Superleague basketball action.
Enos, who is among the Superleague's highest scorers with 24.3 points per game this season, has been sidelined with an ankle injury for the past month. And coupled with the injury to Stephen Tummon, Moycullen have been left without a centre in their three previous games.
However head coach Gerald Lyons is expecting Enos to return this Saturday to face Belfast Star which enjoyed a victory over Killester last weekend.
"They will be on a high going into Saturday," he said. “ It has been an unusual matchup with them this season. They beat us in Galway, but we took them last time we played in Belfast so we will obviously be hoping for a repeat of that performance."
Last weekend in Limerick, Moycullen fell to a physically imposing UL Eagles outfit that powered their way to a deserving 80-59 win with a magnificent 30 points and 27 rebounds from Jason Killeen.
Limerick's zone defence kept Moycullen to just 14 first-quarter points, while their height advantage helped them to a 10-point lead.
Moycullen did surge late in the second quarter and when Dylan Cunningham picked the pocket of UL guard Neil Campbell and converted the turnover into an easy fast break layup, Moycullen found themselves trailing by just five with two minutes left in the half.
Eagles, fresh from their dramatic National Cup victory the previous weekend, responded with a confident string of outside shots that quickly stretched their lead to double digits again and, after a battling first half, Moycullen still found themselves trailing by 13 at the break.
Good shooting throughout the second half from Salva Camps and Cian Nihill was not enough to get the score as close again. As Eagles slowly began to wear the smaller Moycullen down, any momentum for the visitors was usually snuffed out by Eagles pounding the ball inside to their big players close to the basket for high percentage scoring opportunities.
Moycullen: Cían Nihill (20 ), Dylan Cunningham (14 ), Salva Camps (13 ), Michael Dowd (3 ), Paul O'Brien (3 ) Eoghan Maxwell (2 ), Nollaig Cunningham (2 ), Patrick Lyons (2 ), Kevin Folan, Ian Burke
