City Oilers completed their Africa club basketball adventure with an 88-69 win over Cameroon’s Nzui-Manto to finish ninth out of the ten teams but returned home from Egypt with their heads up, writes JOHN VIANNEY NSIMBE.
Before City Oilers flew out to Egypt for the Africa Champions Cup, their coach Mandy Juruni said he was not only looking forward to venturing into new waters but also anxious to see how his team performs against Africa’s best.
Juruni was confident they would be competitive enough to give a shot at the title. He could not commit on whether they were going to be mere participants.
However, there are lessons learnt for Juruni and his team despite finishing the event second last. For starters, the opposition Oilers faced was largely composed of much bigger players. And in basketball, height matters.
Small players like Jimmy Enabu and Ben Komakech were faced with bigger markers and that limited them. But height was the least of Oilers’ concerns as reports indicate that the Ugandan representatives paled in the shadows of teams from Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Angola whose players had immense strength and stamina.
In essence, Uganda’s next representatives will have to hit the gym more dedicatedly to beat the odds. Besides Oilers’ starting five of Komakech, Enabu, Landry Ndikumana, Kami Kabangu and Stanley Ociti, the rest of the team did not play well.
Without a good bench, it was always going to be difficult for Juruni’s side.
But this could not have come as a surprise. Before departure, majority of Oilers’ substitutes were not doing well.