UCD Marian recorded a promising win over local rivals DCU saints in preparation for their quater final National Cup game this weekend.

UCD Marian Head Coach Fran Ryan, believes their 81-69 win over DCU Saints on Saturday night won’t have any bearing when the sides meet again next Saturday in the quarter finals of the National Cup.

The Saints lead at the break by four points but Marian bounced back after the re-start and stepped up their defensive responsibilities. DCU were restricted to just 16 points in the first 15 minutes of the second half and UCD opened up a commanding nine point lead.

Eoin Quill kept Saints in the game, scoring 12 points in less than two minutes, but it wasn’t enough as Marian maintained their push towards the Play-Off’s.

"You cannot read too much into this result,” said Ryan. “They beat us comprehensively in their place, we dominated the second half here and it depends which UCD Marian turns up. We were behind at half time, we made a few small errors but we minimized those problems in the second half.

"We lifted up our defence, they hurt us on the boards in the first,” added Ryan. “They are a big and a physically very strong side. I think the scoreline was a little generous. There is a game next Saturday, one game of Basketball and a big incentive if we can get through that one."

DCU Saints then bounced back from their loss to UCD/Marian to record a 90-77 win over Belfast Star on Sunday. The Saints restricted Star’s normally very effective American Clayton Longmire to just 18 points and once again reached the 90th point mark this season.

This proves that nothing can be taken for granted in the league as earlier in November UCD Marian were subject to a 10 point loss to Star at home here in UCD.

Saturday December 4th sees two of Marians Teams playing in the quarter finals of the national cup. First the Division 1 team play Castleisland at 5:30pm and then the SuperLeague for the second week in a row play local rivals D.C.U. Saints at 8pm. The national cup is the biggest tournament in Irish Basketball with the final being played in arena and shown live on RTE 2.