It was mixed emotions for UPDF basketball on the final day of the 2026 National Basketball League (NBL) regular season on June 14 at the YMCA in Wandegeya.
While the UPDF Lady Tomahawks were celebrating their best finish in the regular season of sixth, a climb from eighth in the 2025 season, the men’s side, the UPDF Tomahawks lost 62-67 to Victoria University Crocs, and were relegated to the second tier.
After returning to the top flight at the end of the 2025 season, following their consistent displays in the first division alongside the Uganda Martyrs University Flames, UPDF planned to stay in the NBL for more than one season.
It is something they had done before, when, at the end of the 2019 season, they secured top-flight status alongside the Namuwongo Blazers. However, this time round, their “goose was cooked” even before the season started, making relegation inevitable.
UPDF coach, Baker Kyambadde knows the NBL too well, having lived in it all his life, from way back in High School, as a protege at the Charging Rhinos basketball club. He said: “The NBL is a tough league.
You have to be ready for the battle if you are to survive in it. But for us, we only managed to keep four players from the team that had enabled us secure promotion last year.”
As such, Kyambadde noted, much of this season has been a rebuilding one, as he bedded in the new 10 players, that ran the course of the season. Some of them actually joined at the beginning of the second round in order to give them a push.
As a result, UPDF lost so many games even when they were in winning positions. So, even when they rallied to dramatically beat the UCU Canons in overtime on the penultimate weekend of the regular season, it just kept them on a cliffhanger.
All the Crocs, who were chasing a higher placing on the log, for a bigger chance to compete in the playoff quarter-finals did, was just push UPDF over the cliff, into the abyss metaphorically. That was back in the first division.
“While I think we fought hard in the last game, it was a little too late. We had messed up in many games before because we were still trying to find cohesion. But at the same time, we suffered a lot of misfortune. When we acquired Bolton Rujumba from City Oilers, he broke his hand in his first game. Then, another player of ours, Collin Musiime suffered a road accident,” Kyambadde said.
Incidentally, Rujumba returned for the final game against the Crocs. But he played on pain killers for 28 of the 40 minutes regulated for the entire game. He could not complete the game because of the excruciating pain in the hand, yet he managed 18 points, which was a team high.
Perhaps that pain would have been worth it if UPDF had stayed up. Yet, now, for Kyambadde, life has to continue. His focus is to build on what they have achieved this year, however little.
He hopes they can maintain this team, because if they do, it will be easier for them to bounce back with a vengeance and be more impactful. In 2022, they made the quarter-final playoffs, only to lose to City Oilers very late.
By then, they boasted of players like Edrine Walujjo, who later joined City Oilers, Arthur Wanyoto, a star at the Namuwongo Blazers and David Okello, who also featured for the UCU Canons. No doubt, UPDF has brought forth talent, and therefore, will not allow the ignominy of relegation define them.
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