Neptune mauled as Tigers roar on

BASKETBALL: The Tralee Tigers continue to be the club to beat in the Superleague. Once again, they toppled one of their main rivals in ruthless fashion this weekend and again they were ably led by new player-coach Chris Craig.

Despite home advantage in Cork, Neptune could not keep pace with their Kerry rivals and if not for the long-serving Kenny Gamble they would have been out of it by the end of the first quarter. Instead, they trailed by just two points with 12 of their 22 points coming from the American. Yet, by the midway point they were trailing 50-36.

Neptune pulled level in the third but Tralee merely upped the intensity once more to complete a clean sweep of Cork rivals, having beaten UCC Demons last week.

UCC suffered another narrow defeat when beaten by Limerick in the UL Arena. In a nail-biting finish, Limerick's Stephen King scored a two pointer with just 0.3 of a second left on the clock.

Killester overcame UCD Marion 114 to 103, with 17-year-old Aaron Westbrooks, son of coach Jerome, making a significant defensive contribution in the final quarter.

Jarron Jones looked set to steer the game in UCD's favour with 13-points in the third quarter but young Westbrooks had other ideas as he shut his opponent out in the fourth. Damien Morbley and Kieran O'Brien did the offensive work to produce 18 points in the final straight.

Elsewhere, Shamrock Rovers Hoops lost again, this time to St Vincent's 93-77 on Friday. Two days later, however, the outlook was brighter as the north Dublin club beat Waterford 103 to 90.

The new force in the Superleague, Ballina, also won again with Lawrence Young and Ronan McGarrity netting a combined points total of 54 to overcome the Killarney Lakers 108 to 99.