{"id":1746,"date":"2020-02-07T10:24:38","date_gmt":"2020-02-07T10:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ballincolligbasketball.ie\/?p=1746"},"modified":"2021-01-04T12:14:58","modified_gmt":"2021-01-04T12:14:58","slug":"presidents-cup-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ballincolligbasketball.ie\/?p=1746","title":{"rendered":"Presidents Cup Final"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

History has been made at the National Basketball Arena as Tradehouse\nCentral Ballincollig became the first team to win three consecutive President\u2019s\nCup titles <\/b>last Saturday afternoon with a superb 73-67 overtime win over IT\nCarlow Basketball in a thriller that was equal parts exhilarating, frustrating and\nnerve wrecking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unbeaten at the top of the Division 1 table and heading toowards the\nSuper League, Tradehouse Central Ballincollig were favourites to complete\nthree-in-a-row in the President’s Cup final and sweep IT Carlow aside. Instead,\nthey were pushed to the limit by the underdogs, who tore into Ballincollig in\nthe first quarter to lead 24-8. Here\u2019s a recap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though Ballincollig came into the game as overwhelming\nfavourites, Carlow did an incredible job of pushing the undefeated league\nleaders the whole way through to the end. The heavy underdogs managed to fight\nall the way into overtime before coming out on the losing end by just six\npoints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IT Carlow raced into an early 10-2 lead causing Ballincollig\nhuge issues. A Kieran O\u2019Sullivan timeout helped settle Ballincollig\u2019s nerves somewhat\nas Andre Nation picked up some nice scores to keep the defending champions\nclose early on.  Carlow were growing in confidence as each minute of the\nfirst quarter passed and an upset was starting to look like a real possibility\nwhen the first quarter ended 24-13. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second quarter started well defensively for Ballincollig\nas they started forcing turnovers but on the offensive end things still weren\u2019t\nworking smoothly as the ball never seemed to settle in their players hands.\nOffensively Zabola was becoming increasingly influential and Andre Nation\ncontinued to pick up scores including an impressive dunk but the champions were\nstill struggling to contain their opponents. Back to back threes from Carlow\nrestored their confidence and an 11-point lead 28-17. Ballincollig were looking\nincreasingly dangerous and a nice finish by Jack Kelly. Colin Murray narrowed\nthe gap even further to just five but the perfect half for Carlow was capped\noff on the buzzer as Jordan Fallon scored a huge three pointer leaving the halftime\nthe score was 40-31. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the second half started Ballincollig started to show more\nof their championship DNA as Zabola helped reduced the lead to just five with\ntwo nice fastbreak layups. Scores were increasingly hard to come by and a big\nthree pointer from Ciaran O\u2019Sullivan helped reduce the lead to just two with\nthree minutes to go in the third. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hopes of an upset were continuing to grow though as James\nButler kicked off the fourth quarter with a midrange jump shot. Ciaran\nO\u2019Sullivan scored his sixth consecutive point and his cousin Ronan added two to\nget their lead to just one. Both teams traded scores, but it was Ciaran\nO\u2019Sullivan again that stepped up to give Ballincollig their first lead at\n54-53. The drama wasn\u2019t over though as Ballincollig turned the ball over and an\nAaron Whelan three reduced the lead to just two with 12.7 seconds remaining.\nComing out of the Ballincollig timeout, Carlow got one more opportunity and a\nhuge last second basket saw the game go to overtime tied at 62. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overtime started with a bang as Andre Nation had a huge\nalley-oop dunk to bring the Ballincollig fans to their feet. We continued to\nfind scoring more easily and had built a six-point lead before Carlow scored a\nhuge three to get it back to a one-point game with 2.27 remaining. With the\ngame in the balance it was Andre Nation yet again who stepped up with a massive\nthree-point lead to give Ballincollig a six-point lead and the President\u2019s\ntrophy headed to Cork for the third consecutive year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

History has been made at the National Basketball Arena as Tradehouse Central Ballincollig became the first team to win three consecutive President\u2019s Cup titles last Saturday afternoon with a superb …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1314,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ballincolligbasketball.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/pc2.jpg?fit=200%2C200&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ballincolligbasketball.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ballincolligbasketball.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ballincolligbasketball.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ballincolligbasketball.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ballincolligbasketball.ie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1746"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ballincolligbasketball.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1747,"href":"https:\/\/ballincolligbasketball.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1746\/revisions\/1747"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ballincolligbasketball.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ballincolligbasketball.ie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ballincolligbasketball.ie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ballincolligbasketball.ie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}