JBC keep heads high

THE gulf that exists between Zimbabwe and some regional and continental powerhouses in basketball might not be as big as initially feared.

Zimbabwe and Harare champions JBC had some decent performances at the recent Basketball Africa League (BAL).

The team performed much better than any representative side from Zimbabwe at the African tourney, as it reached the East

Division Elite 16 round.

It was, however, at that stage that coach Addison Chiware and his men faltered, losing all their group games against perennial BAL campaigners and Mozambique giants Ferroviário da Beira (55-75); City Oilers of Uganda, who beat them 81-74; and Indian

Ocean Island powerhouse COSPN of Madagascar (73-78). But the three encounters were tightly contested matches.

Prior to that, JBC had topped their regional qualifying round with victories over UNAM University (70-55), Munali Suns (85-50) and one loss to Dolphins (65-68).

The difference between qualifying for the BAL and their disappointment at the East Division Elite 16, as Chiware puts it, boiled down to logistics.

“The Road to BAL Qualifiers were certainly an eye-opener,” Chiware said.

“Starting off in Gaborone for the preliminary rounds, we realised that we could actually dominate the region, and one of the key takeaways, from both rounds, is that we need to learn to manage our logistics much better going forward. The road (travel) has a huge effect on how the boys perform, as we had flawed starts to both tournaments in Botswana and South Africa.

“If you look at how the boys performed at both levels, we had slow starts, but played better as the fatigue wore off.

“In Botswana, we narrowly lost our first game (against Dolphins) and then bounced back to win the next two to progress,” he said.

He spoke of how the logistical shortcomings negatively impacted the team at the Elite 16 stage. JBC went into the game without Tyjhai Byers, their top performer during the preliminaries.