William Sydney Davis II ‘Will’ combined with Uchenna Iroegbu, each posting a double-double to propel Road to BAL debutants Nairobi City Thunder to their first victory in a 89-53 show over Seychelles’ Beau Vallon Heat .
This was the opening match of East Division’s Group D, a group that has attracted five teams and is being played at Filbert Bayi Schools, Kibaha, Dar E Salam,Tanzania.
Will dropped a game-high of 26 points, adding 11 rebounds while American-Nigerian guard Iroegbu posted a rare one with 10 points and 11 rebounds for victory.
The initial stages of the match were a see-saw with the Islanders taking an early 7-2 lead. The Kenyan side clawed back to level the score at seven, Derrick Ogechi giving them the lead for the first time from behind the arc for 10-7.
Gregory Scholastique’s charges, however, kept the scores close despite Thunder’s attempt to pull away, trailing 20-16 at the conclusion of the first quarter.
Thunder returned for the second period a different side, going ahead 23-13 to take a 14-point lead to the break.
“It was a hard game. Thunder are a tough side and I have to congratulate my players for fighting to the end. We had a good start, matched them on everything in the first quarter but we lost the plot with poor defending towards the end of the second quarter and could not recover from that. We have to work on a few areas as we look to win the second match,” Beau Vallon’s skipper Timmy Adam said.
His sentiments were echoed by his coach who says on top of poor defending they lost some crucial points with easy missed baskets that, if converted, would have changed the trajectory of the game. “We have to correct on these things before heading to the next match,” coach Scholastique said.
Thunder kept the second quarter momentum in the third and fourth stanzas, going ahead 19-11 and 27-18 for the convincing victory.
“We started slow,” skipper Tylor Ongwae admits. “However, that’s understandable as we had not played in about a week. Overall, we played hard and stuck together for this win. I know we can get better. With more than a week having not played, we were bound to be rusty and I believe we will be at the top of our game against Urunani.”
His sentiments were echoed by coach Bradley Ibs who attributed their first quarter performance to jitters.
“It was a funny game. We missed some easy layups, some passes that were crucial but I attribute this to first-game jitters, despite having played a couple of friendlies. We also got lazy on defense and were not clinical offensively and this small things contributed to the slow start and we helped them stay in the game longer than we would have wanted,” Ibs opened up adding that he is confident his side would be better in the second match where they face Burundi’s champions Urunani.
Thunder will also play Hosts JKT, Burundi’s Urunani and GNBC of Madagascar.
The Road to BAL 2025 will see over twenty teams compete from October to November for a chance to join six other clubs, who have qualified automatically to the BAL regular season.
