Odaudu upbeat as Hoopers face Malien in BAL opener
Rivers Hoopers head coach, Ogoh Odaudu, has stated that his team has what it takes to do better than last year’s outing at the Basketball Africa League, as they face Stade Malien in their first game of the Kalahari Conference playoffs in Rabat, Morocco on Saturday (today), NewsNGR Sports Extra reports.
The KingsMen became the first Nigerian side to reach the podium at the BAL last year, when they placed third.
While the team aims to do better this season, Odaudu, who was named Coach of The Year last season insists that the team’s immediate focus is to qualify for the playoffs which takes place in South Africa later this year.
“Training has gone well so far, we’ve been working very hard for the past two weeks and we’ve made tremendous progress,” the coach said.
“Every tournament is just like an examination, you want to do better than the previous year. We came third last year, but we do not want to jump far ahead of ourselves. Our goal right now is to qualify from Morocco to the finals in South Africa, and then afterwards we can dream of something else. But right now we’re not thinking so far ahead, we want to be one of the two teams to qualify for South Africa at the end (of the Kalahari Conference).” he said.
After facing Stade Malien today, Rivers Hoopers still have more tough games to come against FUS Rabat of Morocco, and Egypt’s Al Ittihad and the coach acknowledged the level of difficulty posed by the other teams at BAL.
“It’s really difficult, right from qualifying from Nigeria. Now everybody knows our name in Africa now, the Rivers Hoopers, so it’s going to be twice as difficult as it was last season. Nobody’s going to underrate Nigeria anymore. They know what we can do. We drew a huge target on our back [last season] and people will be aiming for us now. But we’re just going to play our basketball and hopefully at the end of the day, qualify (for the playoffs).”
As part of BAL requirements, Rivers Hoopers secured the signatures of point guard, Maxi Shamba (Congo DR), forwards Madut Akec (South Sudan) and Raphiael Putney (USA), while retaining the services of Kelvin Amayo and Peter Olisemeka who helped the Kings Men win the Nigeria Premier Basketball League title last year, and BAL elevate youngster David Ugonna, who was also part of the Rivers Hoopers team at BAL season four.
Despite the absence of sharpshooting Will Perry, the tireless Devine Eke, and the experienced John Wilkins who were among the team’s top performers last year, Odaudu believes his current crop of players are equal to the task.
“It’s a quite different team; we have a new point guard (Maxi Shamba), we have Rahpiael Putney who’s almost 7-foot tall and can shoot the lights out every court. We also have Madut Akec who I think is an upgrade of what we had last year. So I think the team is good to go. I am not one to single out players, I’m a team player, and the whole team is equally important for what we hope to achieve.”
