Many Rwandan basketball fans were excited when Rwanda Energy Group (REG) Basketball Club topped the Sahara Conference of the Basketball African League (BAL) in March, above clubs like Tunisia's US Monastir, who are one of the biggest franchises on the continent.
It was shocking, however, when REG got eliminated from the quarter-finals at the hands of Forces Armées et Police (FAP) Basketball, a Cameroonian side that had finished fourth in the Nile Conference.
According to some insiders in REG, there were a number of issues that led to the abysmal performance in the playoffs, and many of these were due to poor player recruitment, lack of understanding from the top administration of the club, as well as inadequate conditions that characterized their preparations.
On the recruitment side, for example, REG hired Senegalese center Abdoulaye N'Doye going into the playoffs, a player who was so average that his teammates approached the club management and complained about his capabilities.
N'Doye was invited to feature in two of the three friendly games that REG played in Turkey this month, but teammates were quite unsatisfied with his performances, in comparison to Pitchou Manga, the Congolese center who had been dropped in his favour.
"When he was brought in, we thought that he had the qualities and skills to boost the team, in regard to our ambitions of going far enough into the BAL tournament. However, when he featured in the friendly game we played against Bahrain, we realized that he was not the player that we expected him to be. We approached the club president, Francis Murindabigwi, and told him what we had seen, but he insisted that the final decision will be taken by the head coach," one REG player told Weekend Sport on conditions of anonymity.
"Coach Robert Pack was not in Turkey for the warm-up games, but the assistant coach compiled a report about the club's performance and submitted it to the administration, but still, nothing was done in regards to the weaknesses that had been identified," he added.
REG went ahead and used N'Doye in the playoffs and paid a high price for it. Throughout the ten minutes he played in the game against FAP, he managed only one rebound - no point scored, no assist, and no block.
The man he had replaced on the team's roster, observers and pundits say, would have performed better, judging from his former outings for the club at the BAL. For instance, during the Sahara Conference, Pitchou Manga contributed 16 points and 10 rebounds in addition to pulling off some amazing blocks in their famous victory against US Monastir.
In addition, there were more challenges related to the club's pre-playoffs preparations, particularly the friendly games that took place in Turkey, which were marred by poor travel processes.
"When we left Rwanda for Turkey, we had a stopover in Cairo, Egypt, where we spent about 10 hours at the airport, seated on the chairs. The same thing happened when we were coming back, we had a tiresome 10-hour stopover in Uganda," the player said.
When the team got back to Rwanda on May 16, the teams that had to compete against them in the playoffs had started jetting into the country. REG had to quickly forget about their fatigue and prepare for the playoffs, which would get underway in a matter of days - on May 21.
"When we reached here, we were tired and the mood was not so great because of the problems we had faced. But we put ourselves together and tried to give what we could in training during the remaining days," said another player.
Poor planning is also one of the issues that were cited by insiders. One source questioned why star shooting guard Kenneth Gasana was recruited very late that he barely had five days to train with the team.
Weekend Sport tried to reach out to the president of REG basketball club for a comment but we could not lay hold on him by press time Thursday.
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However, we reached out to the Rwanda Basketball Federation (Ferwaba) and one official told us that they got to learn about some problems inside the REG camp, and asked them to solve them, but the club administration showed no will to deal with them, particularly about the late recruitment deals.
It is understood that, even during the regular season in Senegal, there was a protest by some local players who complained about 'unfair contracts' compared to foreigner players.
Officials from the Ministry of Sports and Ferwaba had to fly to Dakar to intervene before the Sahara Conference tipped off.
Players who spoke to us said they hope, in the future, the sports ministry and the basketball federation can take up the responsibilities of handling clubs that qualify to represent Rwanda at the BAL in order to avoid similar challenges faced by REG this season.
