Basketball in Africa

Basketball. The captain believes participating at Afrobasket Championship was a commendable effort by the whole fraternity and paid homage to his teammates for giving their all at the tournament.

KAMPALA. Silverbacks captain Stephen Omony believes the national basketball team are motivated to get better after they picked up ‘tremendous lessons’ at the recently concluded Afrobasket Championships in Tunisia.
Uganda got a tough welcome to the continental stage, winning one of five games, a classification match against Zimbabwe (72-64). Three of the Silverbacks’ opponents finished as semi-finalists. Next year, the team will embark on another qualification campaign for Afrobasket 2017. “Being our first time there, we had a lot of learning experience. As players, this gives us a challenge and responsibility to get to those standards required to play at this level,” Omony said when the team arrived at Entebbe Airport last Tuesday. “We found out that shooting was a tremendous part of this competition, while maturity and mental strength are required, too, for this stage. We need to improve our shooting percentages because it was a great undoing to us and you will find out that teams that shot well got results,” he added.
The captain, who believes participating at Afrobasket was a commendable effort in itself, paid homage to his teammates for giving their all at the tournament.
“Previously, some teams didn’t know about us and thought they would walk over us, but we fought hard and earned respect. This tournament severely exposed our weaknesses, but also helped us improve on our strengths. We must get better,” Omony noted.

OMONY AT A GLANCE
Name: STEVEN OMONY
Age: 34
Club: Kryshna Falcons
Height: 6’ 4”
Position: Forward