City Oilers have learnt their lessons in BAL

It is expected that City Oilers will get another tactician to help head coach Andrew Tendo when the team starts its second campaign of the Basketball Africa League Nile Conference in April. 

Tendo replaced Mandy Juruni and has led the nine-time champions to a 5-1 start in the National Basketball League, with the Nile Conference of the continental showpiece about a month away. 

City Oilers were drawn in the Nile Conference and will face defending champions Al Ahly of Egypt, Libya’s Al Ahly and Central African Republic’s Bangui between April 17 and 27 in Cairo. 

“The group we were put in is very competitive. If you don’t come ready to fight, it is one of those where you can go 0-4 and you are out of the tournament in the first round,” Tendo told Sunday Monitor in the aftermath of his side’s first league defeat of the season. 

“At this level, everyone has loaded, everyone has been preparing for this. BAL is the biggest thing for all club and naturally, everyone has come to fight,” he added. 

City Oilers finished bottom of the Nile Conference last season after losing to Al Ahly, Petro de Luanda, SLAC and Cape Town Tigers. The team’s only victory came against Ferroviario da Beira but the 1-4 record was insufficient to land a playoffs spot for the Ugandan champions. 

We have time

There is over a month until the Nile Conference gets underway and Tendo believes the club will have time to scout the opponents and know what to expect when the action starts. 

“At the moment we haven’t focused on that because everyone is still trying to solidify their team, so we are expecting a few new faces to come in. We have literally a month to go and we should be able to get some data, especially on Bagui.

“When it comes to Al Ahly (Libya), the guys that played for their national team, a couple of them are in that team and we shall see some familiar faces,” Tendo, who was with the Silverbacks team that lost 71-59 to Libya in the first phase of the 2025 Fiba Afrobasket Qualifiers last month, revealed.

The BAL expanded from two conferences to three, adding the Kalahari Conference, and the total number of games in the season from 38 to 48.

The number of teams in the conferences decreased to four, with all teams playing each other twice. The top two teams in each conference and the two best third-placed teams will advance to the playoffs.

“I believe we have a very good chance because, for every season we play, we learn lessons and get better,” Tendo said of the team’s chances of making the playoffs. 

“The last round we played in South Africa (Elite 16), we actually performed much better than we did the first time. And that is simply because we had learnt a couple of lessons.” 

Making the BAL for the second time in a row, City Oilers will have their focus on making it out of the Nile Conference and into the playoffs set to take place in Kigali, Rwanda. 

Khaman Maluach, the projected third pick of the 2025 NBA Draft, will be one of the additions to the Oilers’ roster for the season.

The 7-foot-2 South Sudan centre featured for Senegal’s AS Douanes last season but will play for City Oilers in his final BAL season. Maluach, born in South Sudan, fled with his family to Uganda due to the 2013 civil war, started his basketball journey in Uganda. 

Basketball Africa League 

Nile Conference 

Dates: April 17-27 

Venue: Cairo, Egypt 

Teams: Al Ahly (Egypt), Bangui (Central African Republic), Al Ahly (Libya), City Oilers (Uganda)