Ireland vs Romania last sat.

Lafortezza

Anyone watch this on saturday?
Ireland got convincingly beaten. I haven't kept up with Irish bball in the last while. How many of the team are based inthe National league?

Is Pat Burke the highest profile NBA player? No offence to the guy but he didn't impress too much.

Kinetic^

I watched about 2 and a half quarters and then turned it off, it was embarassing tbh and Burke played absolutely ****e!!!!!!!!

nialo

Watched it to the end. Depressing to watch really. Pat Burke is technically an NBA player but getting no game time over there. And it showed. Only two that played half decent was Bree and Larranaga. They had no real offense and could hold there own boards. Showed some light at the very end off the game. But it was to little to late. Good easy win for Romania.

phil

Nice to see Emmett Donnelly on the team and played pretty well when he did come on. Got a nice steal in the fourth by playing with a bit of urgency. Ireland came back in the fourth quarter.

The Romanian point guard was a class act though, best point guard I've ever seen play in real life (certainly in terms of on-court intelligence anyway). The romanians were pretty tough and Ireland complained a lot about some of the decisions the refs were giving.

Burke didn't do too much, but remember that he's not getting much game time and he has bulked up quite a bit as well. Plenty of players lose a bit of their touch when that happens and it takes game practice to get that back.

The main problem as I saw it was that Ireland never played with enough urgency in the first and second quarter. They let Romania walk up the court and the point guard was skinning Conor McGrath and Michael Bree. Combine that with poor defence from some of the big men, it didn't bode well.

One serious problem I had with Burke was his inability to learn that his man could shoot. He'd deny him an inside lane and his man would step back and Burke would just give him an open shot. Pretty sure he nailed most of them.

Ireland had serious problems breaking down the Romanian defense and don't have any line breakers. I thought Bracey was reknowned for being able to skip by his man, but it wasn't happening on Saturday at least.

EDIT:

Oh and Emmett Donnelly was the only part of that squad that is based in Ireland (plays for Vincents). All the other guys play in Europe (France, Italy, Switzerland...) apart from Burke who's with the Suns.

Phil.

jdivision

Ireland were awful, no commitment or desire to rebound at either end of the court. Offense was a mess, couldn't find the open man and couldn't penetrate.