Early bird approach for Oilers

With the Basketball Africa League Nile Conference set to tip off on April 19 in Cairo, Egypt, Uganda’s representatives City Oilers are intensifying their preparations to ensure much better returns than registered last season.

The nine-time National Basketball League champions finished bottom of the Nile Conference with a 1-4 record last season and missed out on the BAL Playoffs.

A year later, the Oilers are doing things differently with the goal of finishing in the top two to make it to Kigali, Rwanda, for the highly-anticipated postseason. 

Having completed their league first round on Easter Monday, Oilers have already put their focus on BAL and departed Entebbe International Airport for Alexandria, Egypt, early Saturday morning.

Get ready

The team will camp in Alexandria until April 18 before connecting to Cairo for their opening game of the season, against defending champions and hosts Al Ahly. 

Libya’s Al Ahly Benghazi and Central African Republic’s Bangui Sporting Club are the other two sides the Oilers must deal with in the Nile Conference. 

Six locally-based players will be joined by another foreign-based six to complete the roster. The two groups will link up in Alexandria to give new head coach Nesba Karim enough time to prepare the team.

Tony Drileba, James Okello, Titus Lual, Ivan Muhwezi, Fayed Baale and Allawi Ssenkubuge are the locally based players selected and will be joined by Robinson Opong, Brandon Sebirumbi, Dane Miller Jr. Anthony, Bashir Ahmed Mohammed and Rembert Patrick Ronald for the camp.

Falando Jones, who won the scoring title after averaging 21.6 points last season, is still in talks with the club to return. The team will later be boosted by the arrival of Duke-bound youngster Khaman Maluach. 

“The camp is very important because we are going to meet the rest of the team and I look forward to seeing them. Hopefully, they can work as hard,” Karim told Score in an interview. 

Whereas the head coach had no say in the selection of the foreign-based players, he believes it will be competitive for the season.

“The team was prepared by the people in charge and I know they have done their best, they have built this team to make sure that it is the most competitive and there’s no problem with that. We are just going to continue to build.”

With all teams playing each other twice in the conference, the top two teams and the two best third-placed teams will advance to the playoffs. City Oilers will be hoping to avoid any mathematics by making the top two in the group. 

Basketball Africa League 

Nile Conference Teams: Al Ahly (Egypt), Bagui Sporting Club (Central African Republic), Al Ahly Benghazi (Libya), City Oilers (Uganda)

Dates: April 19-27

Venue: Cairo, Egypt

City Oilers Team For Camp: Tony Drileba, James Okello, Titus Lual, Ivan Muhwezi, Fayed Baale and Allawi Ssenkubuge, Robinson Opong, Brandon Sebirumbi, Dane Miller Jr. Anthony, Bashir Ahmed Mohammed and Rembert Patrick Ronald