During the heat of the Ugandan NBL Semi finals playoffs, the draw ceremony for the Second Round “Elite 16” of the Basketball Africa League (BAL) 2020 Qualifying Tournaments took place at the House of Basketball last Thursday, in the Ivoirian Capital City of Abidjan.
The 16 teams are divided into two groups (G and H) of eight teams each, and games will take place in Yaounde (Cameroon) and Kigali (Rwanda).
Group games will take place in Yaounde from November 26 to December 1 while Group H will take place in Kigali from December 17-22.
City Oilers are in the bid to represent Uganda in the inaugural BAL regular season and they’ve been pooled in tier B of the East Division’s Group H together with KPA(Kenya), Ferroviario de Maputo (Mozambique) and Cobra (South Sudan). Group H’s Tier A has the following teams; Patriots(Rwanda) , GNBC (Madagascar), UNZA Pacers (Zambia) and JKT (Tanzania).
The top two teams from each group will advance to the Semi-Finals, where the teams that finish in the first three places will qualify for the Basketball African League regular season in March 2020.
We asked Oilers Coach Mande Juruni if the injuries his team is facing will cause much of something to worry about at the BAL qualifiers but he seemed rather confident saying;
“We shall have a good team. We have four guys joining us; two bigs and two guards(Jordan Mayes and Robinson Opong Odoch). We want to qualify for the first season of the Basketball Africa League and I think this will be very big for Ugandan basketball. We are not playing for only ourselves but we are playing for the whole country; everytime we have representatives playing at the international level, the country is recognized. Uganda has been recognized as a country that’s growing very fast in the game because of all the international engagements we’ve had as the National team, 3X3 teams and City Oilers. It’s always a plus for the country if we can represent at that level.”
The draw results are as follow:
GROUP G – WEST DIVISION : YAOUNDE
A – 1-FAP ; 2-AS Nigelec; 3-GSP and 4-Al Naser
B – 1-ABC ; 2- ASB Mazembe; 3- Manga BB; 4- AS Police
Group H – EAST DIVISION : KIGALI
A – 1- Patriots ; 2-GNBC; 3- UNZA Pacers; 4- JKT
B – 1- KPA; 2-Ferroviario ; 3-Cobra Sports ;4- City Oilers
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