03 May 2023 | Basketball

Tuesday, May 2, 2023

• City Oilers 68-96 SLAC
• Cape Town 75-91 Al Ahly

City Oilers head coach Mandy Juruni was a very disappointed man after his side lost the third game of the Basketball Africa League in the Nile Conference. Juruni highlighted the lack of effort as the reason why his troops fell to Guinea’s SLAC in a 96-68 loss to slump to a 0-3 record at the grand stage. “We just did not compete,” Juruni said shortly after a disappointing result in a game they badly wanted to end the poor run. “So many layups given away, so many assists gone the wrong side and it summed up how we lacked the togetherness in the game. All that contributed to the pour show and we got punished,” he added. SLAC exhibited a high class of hunger as they started with the perfect rhythm to take a 24-13 lead after the first quarter. Guinea’s side carried the lead to the second quarter carding a 20-12 lead ensuring they go to the long break with the scoreboard reading 44-25. “If you come to play these games, these teams, you have to be mentally and physically ready. I thought we were not mentally and physically ready to play this game.” “They (SLAC) scored very many points in the paint, we had 20 turnovers, and they scored 19 points off of that. They scored so many uncontested shots,” he underlined. “We have to show how tough we are. We have two must-win games, and we believe in this team. We believe we can be a better team.” James Justice Jr topped the scoring list with 30 points while Falando Jones added 20 but all this could not hurt SLAC. According to Juruni, they picked several lessons from the challenge and will go back to the training ground to try and fix how to return physically and mentally better. The Oilers tried to have the last kick of the horse but it was too late and the Ugandan Champions fell trailing to 28 points in a one-sided encounter. They have already lost to Petro de Luanda and Al Ahly and the most recent defeat to SLAC darkened the journey to Kigali as it kicked off the exit story.

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