Work beginning to pay off.

Another early morning start got the team in the gym in St. Joe's for 9am again. Today they covered a lot of information including the involvement of post players in the offence which has been a weak point to date in a mainly Guard dominated group. The session was briefly disrupted by an unfortunate injury to Templeogue player Stephen James. Thankfully the damage does not seem as serious as it was initially feared but Stephen will be taking it easy in the coming days and it is unclear as to whether or not he will be available for the upcoming tournament at present.

After a tough training the lads got a trip to the Mall for lunch and a small bit of down time before heading back to the hotel for rest ahead of tonight's two games.

The first of the two games at Bulkeley High was against South Windsor High School and saw the squad split by age group for a change. The '93's faced a relatively inexperienced South Windsor squad who found it tough early on with Ciaran Roe getting going early on what turned out to be a great shooting night for the Eanna Point Guard. Ireland led 31 to 11 on the back of 3 three-pointers from Ciaran in the first half.

All in all it was a very balanced display from the group with 9 players managing to get on the score sheet. The second half was highlighted by some good individual play from Garrett Galvin who 12 of his 14 points in the second half. Final Score was 76-36 in favour of Ireland(leading scorer's: Ciaran Roe 14 pts, Garrett Galvin 14 pts, Shane O'Neill 9 pts).

The second game provided a much tougher challenge for the older players on the squad, especially with the loss of Stephen who would have been playing this game against Windsor High-school if he had not gotten injured earlier on. Again the Irish lads came out with all guns blazing with David Connolly leading the way with 10 points in the first half which ended 36-31 in favour of Ireland.

A tough Windsor squad refused to go away however and managed to keep the pressure on the Irish team up until the final buzzer. In the second half Ben Horner took control of the game, scoring 13 of his game high 21 points in the second half including some pretty spectacular plays that will hopefully make him a success in the coming season when he transfers to the Hotchkiss School here in Connecticut. Final Score was 67-66 in favour of Ireland( Leading scorer's: Ben Horner 21 pts, Peter Herron 13 pts, David Connolly 12 pts.).

After a generally long and successful day the lads earned their choice of dinner and a lie in tomorrow. There was a lot of positives to be taken from the evening games including the use of the post players in the offence which was a credit to the focus displayed by the players during the morning session.