Silverbacks back home, hope for better preps

The national men’s basketball team, Silverbacks, returned back home on Friday after a delayed stay in Angola.
The team, which was scheduled to return home on Monday November 29, ended up waiting until Friday December 3 after a delay in Benguela saw them miss the only available connection flight to Adis Ababa.

The next connection flight would come four days later and the team had some extra days in Luanda. With the frustrating campaign ending in a 1-2 record for the Silverbacks, attention will now shift to July 2022 when the second round tips off.

We can do better 
Uganda only arrived in Angola a few hours to the opening game and looked out of sorts against Mali. “We need to have better preparations,” team captain Jimmy Enabu told Daily Monitor upon the team’s arrival.

“We need more time together as a team to put us in position to win games,” he added.
The last two campaigns for the team, the Afrobasket and first round of the FIBA World Cup Qualifiers, have been headlined by below par preparations and fairly good results which could have been better with better preparations. It was a successful outing.

Coach Mandy Juruni believes the team can call the Angola trip a successful one considering the challenges.
“I can say it was a successful business trip,” Juruni told this paper.

“With all the circumstances we were in, we managed to get a well deserved win which gives us a chance to build on with good preparations and a full squad available,” 

Uganda were without some of their best players for the first round and rode on the back of Barcelona’s Brandon Davies to get a much needed win that left the team third on the log with three games to play in Group A.

Chance for others 

Satisfied Coach. The absence of some players opened the door for others and Juruni says the experience is massive for those who got the opportunity to play. “That’s huge experience them and I am hoping that they learnt a lot and that it inspired them to be better.”

Players like Fayed Baale, Titus Odeke, Emmanuel Womala and Ivan Muhwezi all had an opportunity to play against some of the continent’s best players.