Basketball in Africa

KENYA's United States University Africa (USIU-A) team was locked out of the All Africa Games basketball final match against Uganda for allegedy fielding ineligible players.
Ugandan coach Albert Aciko lodged a complaint on Wednesday evening to the tournament's technical committee to the effect that USIU-A had fielded non-Kenyan players, which is against the championships rules. The technical committee then held a meeting to deliberate on the issue and found USIU-A guilty of the offence before subsequently disqualifying them from the tournament.
The Ugandan coach claimed that USIU-A had fielded four non-Kenyan players including--Ghyslane Uwimana, Magnifique Ndayikengerutse, Cynthia Irankunda (from Burundi), and South Sudanese Manuela Biel in their four matches of the tournament.
Reached for comment, the USIU-A coach George Mayiega declined to speak to the media on the matter. The players too were a non-committal on the unfortunate unfolding.
Effort to reach the director of the technical committee, Bonifas Salano to explain why the non-Kenyan players had been accredited to participate in the event were also futile.
The move saw Uganda pitted against Mozambique in the ladies' final and won the 48-44 to take home the gold medal. Though Uganda trailed 15-20 at the breather, they resumed the second half in high spirit to beat Mozambique 20-12 in the third quarter. It was a neck-to-neck affair in the fourth quarter with the two sides sharing spoils at 12-12.
Commenting on the game, Uganda's coach Aciko praised the girls for their hard work throughout the tournament. "I am happy the girls played so well to win the title. This is the first International Championships title for the team and this gives us joy and reason to celebrate," said the cheerful Aciko.
"I came to learn about USIU-A's ineligible players on the second day of the tournament and I had to be very sure that the girls we suspected were indeed not Kenyans. It was yesterday (Wednesday) that I was certain the four players were non-Kenyans and I immediately lodged a complaint with the technical committee. My complain was not malicious at all," added Aciko.
Clair Lamunu top-scored for Uganda with 18 points while Joy Chemtai came second with 8 points. Monica Tembo and Sousa Cita topped Mozambique's score sheet with 10 and 8 points respectively.
In the men's spirited final, pitting Egypt and Mozambique, the latter routed the North Africans 71-54 to emerge the 2014 All Africa University Games basketball champions.Meanwhile, Egypt retained the games overall title for the second time after they bagged 112 medals as the curtains came down on the week-long show at the University of Nairobi grounds. Egypt won the bi-annual event in 2012 in Namibia.
The pharaohs bagged 66 medals--20 gold, 38 silver and 8 bronze to finish ahead of hosts Kenya who bagged (68 )medals--8 gold medals, 33 silver and 27 bronze. Neighbours Uganda finished third with 48 medals--4 medals, 9 silver and 35 bronze.
Kenya won five gold, eight silver and six bronze in athletics and 11 silver and 16 bronze in swimming. In basketball, Kenya bagged bronze while in chess the hosts settled for four silver and two silver in football. Other Kenya medals came through Karate (two silver), handball (silver), tennis (one gold and three silver), and table tennis (silver).
Ghana finished fourth with 19 medals, 11 gold, four silver and four bronze while South Africa were fifth with seven medals--six gold and a silver. Senegal had four silver and 2 bronze while Cameroon and Zimbabwe tied in the seventh position with five medals apiece.