John Carroll is being thrown into the deep end as the new captain of the Irish men's basketball team ahead of two of their biggest games in recent memory, but it’s something he believes he’s ready for.
Carroll was named Ireland’s new skipper this week, following the surprise international retirement of Kyle Hosford.
News of Hosford’s retirement came just days ahead of Ireland’s the FIBA EuroBasket 2025 Pre-Qualifiers against Austria and Switzerland.
Ireland take on Austria in Salzburg on Thursday, followed three days later by their home clash with Switzerland and those two games will decide whether of not Ireland progress in qualification.
While Carroll admits that his sudden elevation to captaincy was a surprise, it’s a position he’s prepared to take over.
"It was a surprise because he’s still moving around well but I was ready because I was vice-captain already," he said, speaking to RTÉ Sport.
"We just have a lot of continuity with our roster and there’s more leaders than just me and the fact that we have a lot of veterans back is good too.
"I’m very honoured to be named captain. I’ve learned a lot of from Kyle and Jason Killeen before him on the leadership side and hopefully I can fill their shoes as captain going forward. It’s probably the proudest achievement of my basketball career to date."
Back-to-back wins over Cyprus mean that Ireland are very much still in the hunt to move on to round 2 of the pre-qualifiers despite losing to Austria and Switzerland last winter.
Ireland are a point behind both teams in the Group A table, ahead of the final round of games with top spot in the group still very much up for grabs.
Ireland suffered a 97-70 defeat to Austria last time, out but Carroll believes that that scoreline wasn’t a fair reflection on the game and feels that his side can do much better this time out.
"These games in general are the biggest in a long time and I think we this is probably the best team we’ve put together since the Americans brought a team, however long ago that was.
"Everyone’s really excited and I think we can get two good results.
"The difference between the teams against Austria wasn’t as big as the scoreline suggests, I think we only lost the first half by four points and then it kind of got away from us.
"It’s more about us than them, we need to clean up our mistakes. But we can see ways to exploit them. They’re a good team, they don’t have great weaknesses but like I said, it’s more about us.
"We had a really good game against Switzerland. I personally had a really bad game but everyone else played well. We lost by 11 but it was much closer than that scoreline again.
"Everyone’s looking forward to it, no-one is scared or anything like that and we feel like we could win both games."
Aside from the captaincy change, Ireland have a fresher look about them heading into these two vital games as Aidan Harris Igiehon comes in for his international debut.
CJ Fulton and Will Hanley, who won the FIBA European Championship for Small Countries with Ireland last summer, both return and are in line for their FIBA EuroBasket debuts.
Carroll believes that the injection of youth into the squad bodes well for both the immediate future and the long-term.
"Aidan Harris is new, he’s been really good and is a really solid team-mate. He’s been really good in practice and we’ve been really impressed with him.
"CJ played for us last summer in the pre-qualifiers and we’re glad to get him back for sure, everybody knows how good he is.
"Those guys are the two main new additions and Will Hanley’s back again after impressing last summer."
