Basketball in Africa

Tense and exciting matches continue at the ongoing National Basketball League. On Friday YMCA narrowly defeated Brikama 36-35 while in the second game Gambia Armed Forces saw off the challenge from Serekunda East 44-38.
Brikama protested that they were victimized by the officials as they felt that they were made to believe that it's a stop time but instead the referees went on to play running time thus allowing them to surrender their lead towards the end, with YMCA eventually clinching victory.
Speaking to Observer Sports after the thrilling encounter, the head coach of Brikama, Lamin Touray, was understandably disappointed with the outcome of the match. "I feel [at the end] my boys were tired when defending and the changes I did were very bad. It will be hard to win the league because every time they (officials) call against Brikama. We don't know the reason they call against us. Any game we play against teams from the Kombos, we have difficulties. We have lots of fouls committed but it doesn't matter the game was over. The time was up, so blow the whistle," he said.
The victorious coach, Foday Singahteh said: "Brikama is a very formidable team. They played very well and they have been playing together for the past five years. We expected that we would have a very tough game. Even though they were leading, the margin was not too much. Their highest lead was nine points so we knew that nine points is three and a half basket. Now we are thinking of Wallidan because we are going to play them in the next game. We will play our normal game, defend very hard and then try to stop them."