The UW-Platteville men’s and women’s basketball teams are overseas. They will check in with Division III basketball fans from time to time. Jeff Skemp is our correspondent.

The third day of the trip started with a morning breakfast and free time for the team to shop, but mainly to catch up on sleep. At 11:45 a.m. the men’s team took a tour of Trinity College, which holds the famous Book of Kells. Following the short tour we had more free time to walk the city of Dublin on our own, and do more souvenir shopping. We came together at 2:30 for a team pregame meal and left for the basketball arena at 3:30 to play the Irish National 21 Under team.

The men played first and struggled during the first quarter but continued to keep playing hard and got a spark from the bench into the second period as the Pioneers started to pull away. The third period saw the Pioneers continue their dominance, and the fourth quarter was more of the same as UWP won 81-29. Mike Shaw led all scorers with 22 points and Charlie Lohoff was the only other player in double figures with 10 points. Curt Hanson had 9 and Jeff Skemp 7 points. Eleven of the 15 players for the Pioneers scored in the game as there was a balanced attack. The team was able to eat pizza supported by people on the trip, and will spend their last, hopefully memorable, night together in Dublin.

The Pioneers will leave Dublin tomorrow (Thursday) and move onto Killarney for three days. There they will continue touring as well as play another game.

The UWP women followed the men’s win with a 71-59 victory against the Irish U21 team. Lisa Grantman had 18 points and Megan Guernsey scored 14.