Uganda’s Silverbacks suffered the biggest loss thus far at the FIBA Afrobasket 2021 when they fell to Senegal 93-55 on Wednesday night.
After a competitive first half from the Ugandans against the five-time winners of the competition, the offense stalled and had a ripple effect on the defense.
The Senegalese who are superior in size started to dominate every aspect of the game, outscoring the Silverbacks 53-24.
George Galanopoulos, the head coach of Uganda, took the blame for the loss saying he could have done better in putting his charges in a position to succeed.
When asked about his thoughts on the game during the post-match press conference, without hesitation, Galanopoulos said; ” Not well prepared…
“I’m not saying this to take blame for it (loss). It’s 100 percent on me as far as putting these guys in a position to succeed. I don’t think I help them make adjustments at the right time during the game and offensively we were just not moving the ball.”
Uganda committed 24 turnovers and barely created any open shots until late in the fourth quarter when Adam Seiko and Eric Rwahwire got a couple of open three-pointers.
“17 assists to 24 turnovers is not the number we want, we want that flipped around. We didn’t shoot the ball well but I don’t think we got very good looks either because the offense was stalled.
“I thought the lack of offensive efficiency bled into our defense. We are not okay with it but we have to reflect on it, just wash it, watch film review it, get on court and fix a few things [because] we got another game in two days.”
Uganda is scheduled to take on Cameroon on Friday, August 27 at 1:00pm (EAT).
However, it remains to be seen if the game will go ahead after five cases of Covid-19 were reported in the Cameroon camp on Wednesday which led to the forfeiting of their game against South Sudan.