Loreto Mullingar take regional basketball title

Loreto College Mullingar’s second year basketball team are Midland Regional winners. They played the final on Tuesday of last week, March 14, in Portlaoise and are now up against a strong team from Scoil Chonglais, Baltinglass.

The extremely fast pace of the final led to early errors from both teams, but Loreto’s strong defence was too difficult for Baltinglass to break down easily.

Loreto led for most of the game through some great scores off fast breaks by Grainne Cleary, Shannon Breslin, Katie Kilmurray, Maggie Bartley, Norah Garry and Orla Rijksen.

The breaks were instigated by superb rebounding from Orlagh O’Brien, Sophie O’Brien, Grace Tynan and Emilija Vilkaijte.

In the final few minutes of the fourth quarter, Loreto were down by a single point but gained the lead again through free throws from Grainne Cleary and Orlagh O’Brien to go two points up.

In a nerve wracking final 30 seconds, Loreto gained possession and ran down the clock to become regional winners and advance to the all-Ireland play-offs.

They wait now to get details of their next opponents ahead of the play-offs on April 19.