Basketball union president, coach speak on team’s failure in AfroBasket qualifiers

FOLLOWING Zimbabwe’s failure to progress to the next round of the Afro Basketball qualifiers, the Basketball Union of Zimbabwe (BUZ) came under the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

The aftermath of the round robin tournament which Zimbabwe hosted at the City Sports Centre last weekend saw BUZ plunged into turmoil with numerous accusations ranging from biased team selection to question marks about coach Addison Chiware.

With the dust having settled following what was arguably a week of reflection for the nation and BUZ, Joe Mujuru, BUZ president and Chiware, have refuted the claims levelled against the union and the team.

“In terms of team selection, I don’t want to delve into team selection that is for the coach, but what I can defend is our policy as a Union. It is not our policy to exclude players, players are called into the national team on merit and if merit then chooses to make all players from one team so be it,” Mujuru told Sunday News.

The absence of France-based star, Vitalis Chikoko raised a lot of questions regarding Chiware’s selection criteria.

However, Chiware defended the exclusion of Chikoko attributing it to the ill-timed schedule of the Afrobasketball qualifiers which were played outside the FIBA calendar.

“We all know that to get Vitalis we need a 30 days’ notice because he plays in a top flight league which is different with other playing here and in these particular fixtures we were supposed to have them on a FIBA calendar, unfortunately we played them outside the FIBA calendar which makes it hard to get such a player,” said Chiware.

“Difficult as it was, we did try to get him and his team told us they will release him in February in a FIBA calendar,” continued Chiware.

With much of the criticism based on the fact that, the reigning National Basketball Champions, Mercenaries had no single player in the roster, Chiware played down talks of him overlooking players from the Mutare-based outfit.

“In the Basket Africa League, Mercenaries had Tatenda Maturure, Tatenda Tswatswa, Tawanda Chitsinde of which all of them were in the national team. We also called up Trevor Sanyatwe from Mercenaries even for the June camp but because of his job he said he won’t be able to make it because the schedule at his work is too tight,” Chiware continued.

Having come second on home soil, Chiware still believes all is not lost and is keeping his fingers crossed for a possible wildcard entry which could revive their campaign.

“If we can get a wild card as runners up, we can retain the services of our other professionals because we had already started the process. The FIBA calendar up to 2021 its now there and all clubs respect those dates and FIBA did something extra by providing insurances for players when they get injured on international duty, something which wasn’t there in the Afrobasket preliminaries we played last weekend.”

Chiware attributed the absence of match fitness as the main reason the team fell short, coming from a long holiday which hindered much of their preparations.