City Oilers completed their Africa club basketball adventure with an 88-69 win over Cameroon side Nzui-Manto, to finish ninth out of the ten teams that graced the championship in Egypt, reports JOHN VIANNEY NSIMBE……..
Before City Oilers flew out to Egypt for the Africa Champions Cup, their coach Mandy Juruni said in their last pre-tournament press conference on November 26, that not only was he looking forward to venturing into new waters, but that he was also anxious to see how his team applied itself against Africa’s best.
Juruni was confident they would be competitive enough to give a shot at the title. But with a ninth finish out of 10 ten teams not even the moon was reached for the team aiming for the stars. But a load of lessons were learnt nonetheless.
For starters, the opposition City Oilers faced was largely composed of much bigger players. And in basketball, height matters. Small players like Jimmy Enabu and Ben Komakech, even for all their talent, facing a bigger marker, will usually limit them.
It is not easy to shoot past a bigger player, especially because he makes it hard for you to view the hoop.
But height was probably the least of City Oilers’ concerns in the tournament. But brutal strength was, according to reports. The teams from North Africa like Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, then the Southern African ones like Angola showed more stamina and steel in duels against Uganda’s representatives.
In addition, besides City Oilers’ starting five of Komakech, Enabu, Landry Ndikumana, Kami Kabangu and Stanley Ociti, the rest of the team did not play well.
In four of the total five games City Oilers played, 241 points of the 256 scored in those games, were scored by the starting five. 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 flying out to Egypt, apart from Andrew Opiyu and James Okello, the biggest part of City Oilers’ substitutes were not doing well even in the quarter-final and semi-final play-offs that they swept.
Jeff Omondi is one player, whose top three-point shooting has for years made him a huge asset to any team. But the tail-end of this season has been a stinker for him. He has not performed for City Oilers.
Even in the classification game against Cameroon’s Nzui-Manto, which City Oilers won comfortably 88-69, Omondi could not bring himself to score a single point. That in many ways sums up the lessons for City Oilers, that you must all be firing on all cylinders to beat the odds at that level.
jovi@observer.ug
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