Derby delight for Maree on opening weekend of season

Maree 70

Maree claimed the local bragging rights on the opening weekend of the new Men’s Superleague season when getting the better of Moycullen in the Galway derby in NUIG on a day when Paul Freeman returned to haunt his former side.

Freeman dominated the defensive boards on Saturday night, finishing with 10 defensive rebounds – and 14 in total – as he showed the kind of form which earned him a recall to the senior Irish squad during the summer.

Last season was one Moycullen would probably like to forget, as a couple of narrow losses against some of the league’s more beatable sides, meant they ended the season in a relegation battle.

They have recruited two US players – Grant Olsson of Lincoln University, Missouri, and Daniel Vila of John Hopkins University – for this season, but under Superleague rules, teams can nly have one US player on the court at any one time, meaning Moycullen will need them to dovetail well in the games ahead.

In truth, this was a game in which very little went right for Moycullen, as their usually solid three-point shooting was all but non-existent.

“While the result was hugely disappointing, I was pretty happy with our overall structure. I think we got a lot of the looks we wanted, we just had a horrible night at the offensive end of the floor,” said Moycullen head coach, John Cunningham.

“We shot very poorly, but the fact we were still in the game until close to the end reflected well on our defensive performance, I think. If we’d turned 20 seconds of good defence into 24 on a few occasions, we could have stuck around that bit longer,” he added.

Maree were on top from the start – in fact, they led at the end of all four quarters – with Freeman warming to the task form the start, sinking the first four Maree points before Maree’s own US import, Darin Johnson, announced himself on the Irish stage with the first of three 3-pointers he hit in the game.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.