Debut for Ireland is just the latest basketball story for Braintree's Bridget Herlihy

Bridget Herlihy's world tour just keeps adding more dates.

The former Braintree High basketball star played her college ball at Villanova and has been going global ever since. She spent last season playing professionally in Luxembourg and will head back to Europe in October as she and younger sister Brianna have committed to playing the 2022-23 campaign for a club in Sweden.

That sister double-team will be sweet, especially because Brianna's ACL injury at Villanova robbed them of what was going to be their only season together as starters with the Wildcats.

Bridget's Herlihy's newest side project, though, is strictly a solo gig.

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She recently made her debut for the Irish Women's National Team in a series of four exhibition games against Estonia and Portugal.

"I felt very proud," Bridget Herlihy said by phone from Waterford, Ireland, where she was staying with one of the team's assistant coaches. "Both of my grandparents on my dad's side are from here originally. That's basically the reason I'm able to play on the team. They're not with us anymore, but I do feel like they would be very proud to see me competing for Ireland.

"Honestly, this is my first time even being here in Ireland. To have the opportunity to represent Ireland on my first trip over here, I'm honored."

Herlihy's father, Tom, got dual Irish/American citizenship and convinced Bridget to do the same so she could suit up internationally. He watched online as Bridget, a 6-2 forward, started her Ireland career by dropping a pair of double-doubles on Estonia -- 20 points, 10 rebounds in a 70-56 win on Aug. 6 and 23 points, 15 boards in a 65-61 victory the following day.

Proud?

"Oh, my God, almost to the point of tears when I think that it's too bad that my parents aren't alive to see this," Tom Herlihy said. "And, of course, the Irish community in Braintree, they're all happy for us. It's nice on that level, too.

"My parents were potato farmers; they were really poor. To have their granddaughter playing on the national team would (have been) something (special) for them. They're both gone now, but I carried that hope that (one day Bridget) would be playing in an Ireland uniform."

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Ireland lost both games in Portugal on Aug. 13-14, but Herlihy again played well -- she had 11 points and 8 rebounds in the first matchup and 15 points and 6 rebounds in the second one, a 72-62 defeat. For the four games she averaged 17.3 points and 9.8 rebounds.

Ireland currently is 66th in FIBA's world rankings. Portugal is No. 50 and Estonia is No. 60.

"Bridget was an excellent addition to our team, on and off the court," Ireland coach James Weldon said. "It’s very unusual for someone making their international debut to be top scorer in a game, but Bridget did that, which is incredible."

"I thought I did well," Herlihy, 25, said of the Estonia games that kicked off her Ireland career. "I started off shaky in both (games). I thought the second game was more difficult because going in, I don't think Estonia had any idea what our team looks like right now and they just seemed to come into (the first game) thinking they were going to roll over us. We got the upper hand (right from the start), but in the second game, they knew what was coming and they threw the first punch. But we were able to come back from that."

As for her play, Herlihy said, "Personally, I think my shot selection could have been better. The coach told me before the game that I would have a little bit of a green light. I don't really like to use that term because then it sounds like I'm just shooting the ball on every possession. But he said, 'You're the professional on the team.' And he knows that I'm not the type of person who's just going to throw up crazy shots. He had that confidence in me from the start."

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Herlihy is the lone American-born player on the team -- Weldon said FIBA rules stipulate that a national squad can only have one player who became a naturalized citizen after the age of 16 -- but at least three of her new teammates play college ball in the U.S. That would be Bronagh Power-Cassidy (Holy Cross), Ella O'Donnell (Quinnipiac) and Enya Maguire (Houston Baptist).

"Honestly, I don't think" it's been hard to adjust, said Herlihy, who is back home now. "For me, everyone's been so nice and so welcoming. I'm the type of person who struggles to start a conversation, but luckily all the other girls on the team don't struggle with that so I was able to become closer with all of them and get to know them just because they're so outgoing."

Bridget Herlihy, who shares an apartment with Brianna near the Villanova campus just outside of Philadelphia, will reunite with the national team when Ireland plays Euro23 qualifiers in November (vs. The Netherlands in Dublin) and February (at the Czech Republic). Ireland split its first two qualifiers, beating The Netherlands and losing to the Czechs last November.

Ireland has never qualified for the top-tier European championship, although it's won five silver medals, including one in 2021, at the second-tier FIBA Women's European Championship for Small Countries.

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"She fits nicely into our up-tempo style of play," Weldon said of Herlihy. "She has proven to be a difficult matchup for all the teams we played because of her ability to play back-to-the-basket or face-up. Also she's very much a team player who will find an open teammate."

One difference between the NCAA game and the international game is a slightly wider lane, which Bridget Herlihy realized early on in her Luxembourg career.

"When I first got to Luxembourg, I got a few 3-second calls in games just because I felt like I was far enough away from the paint but I had a foot in," she said with a laugh. "It was an adjustment then, but now since I've been playing in Europe for a full season I feel like I'm adjusted to that."

That season in Luxembourg -- she averaged 19 points per game and led her team to a runner-up finish in the league -- gave Herlihy the confidence to try more European adventures, including her new one with Ireland.

"Coming over to Europe the first time was a little difficult for me," she said. "Obviously, I grew up always playing with my sister and so we'd lean on each other in times of unknown circumstances, if that makes sense. Coming over here initially was a little bit scary for me. But now that I have the year where I lived (in Luxembourg under my belt it's easier)."

Luxembourg is only 998 square miles, and the town that Herlihy lived in, Contern, wasn't exactly a bustling metropolis.

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"It was very quaint," she said. "When I pictured a small European town or village, that's what I would have pictured. There were two main roads and then a few side roads. Horse stables, cow fields, cornfields. And it was only 15 minutes from (Luxembourg City, the capital). Because Luxembourg is so small, I could be in another country in 30 minutes. I could drive 30 minutes west and be in Belgium or 30 minutes east and be in Germany."

Herlihy played a 25-game regular season with most of the games on weekends. She expects a similar set-up for her and Brianna in Sweden with Mark Basket Marbo Kinna, which was a mid-table team a season ago.

"Yeah, we're so excited," Bridget Herlihy said of taking the sister act on the road. "When we decided to go to (Villanova) together, it wasn't so that we could be together, but we were excited about the prospect of playing together. We ended up not playing a whole lot of minutes together because the year that we could have, she tore her ACL. So we're real excited to get some good, solid time on the court together. It feels like it's been a while, anyway."

"We were sad with the way that turned out" at Villanova, Brianna said, "because I was so young when she started playing that I didn't have many minutes and then if I did get minutes, it was usually subbing Bridget out of the game. That one year that we were going to be playing together I ended up tearing my ACL (as a junior) and was out for the rest of her senior season. So we're excited to get back out on the court together and play on the same team and play in the same rotation together."

Both sisters had solid final seasons at Villanova. Bridget averaged career highs in points (9.3) and rebounds (5.1) as a senior in 2019-20 and then served as graduate assistant coach for 2020-21. While Bridget plied her trade in Luxembourg last winter, Brianna, a 6-foot forward, finished up strong with the Wildcats as a grad student, averaging 10.7 points (third on the team) and 8.2 rebounds (No. 2 on the team).

Villanova (24-9) upset eventual national finalist UConn in February, and made it to the Big East Tournament final and the second round of the NCAA tournament. Brianna Herlihy scored 20 points against Providence and had 15 points and 10 boards in the UConn win.

"Everyone came into that game knowing that if we play Villanova basketball, we can beat this team," she said of winning at Gampel Pavilion in Storrs, Connecticut. "And that's exactly what we did."

A season in Sweden should see the sisters log significant minutes together on the court for the first time since their days at Braintree High. They were part of the legendary 2014-15 Wamps team that finished 25-0 when Bridget was a senior and Brianna was a junior. That team, coached by Kristen McDonnell, featured five future Division 1 college players in the starting lineup with the Herlihy sisters joined by Ashley Russell (Penn), Molly Reagan (Liberty) and Keelah Dixon (first at Colgate, now at UMBC -- University of Maryland, Baltimore County).

"It was definitely one of the better times of my life," Brianna Herlihy, 24, said. "It was nice being able to play with that group of girls and be so successful. I just loved the way we played and how close we were and how we were coached."

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The Herlihys' parents, Tom and Carmen, now live in Florida. There's no immediate family left in Braintree, but as Bridget points out, "Everyone we grew up with is still there. We definitely still have connections there. We don't have any actual family (in town) but we have people that feel like family. ... All of my teammates there, they're the type of people who if you don't speak to them for five years, once you meet up, it's like no time has passed. You're just as close as the day you left. It's a pretty wonderful thing."

All these years later, the Herlihys' basketball odyssey is still going strong, now with a definite European flavor.

Back in her days with the Wamps could Brianna have envisioned where the game would take both of them?

"I honestly don't think I thought about it back then," she said, "but I definitely think that younger me would be proud and happy that we were doing it."

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Ex-Braintree hoop standout Herlihy an emerging star for Ireland