The Uganda Silverbacks participated in the first window of the 2025 Afrobasket Qualifiers in Tunisia managing to secure a single victory against Nigeria and losing to Cape Verde and Libya.

The fans have mixed reactions to the performance of the boys and we shall delve into the positives and negatives from the first window.

3 point shooting

The Silverbacks should be quite happy with their shooting from beyond the arc in their first window. They scored more than 10 3-point shots in each of the 3 games, 11 vs Cape Verde and Libya and 12 vs Nigeria.

Despite scoring multiple 3-point shots, our efficiency was not that great. The team scored 34 of 107 attempts, 31.8% 3P and this should have been a little higher to make us a much bigger threat from distance.

Robinson Opong was the biggest threat scoring 12/25 in the first 2 games but he had 0/9 against Libya.

Tonny Drileba also enjoyed 2 games scoring 8/12 against Cape Verde and Libya and 0/4 against Nigeria.

Ivan Muhwezi was a menace against Libya with 3/6 but in the first 2 games, he attempted just 3 shots from distance scoring 1.

Adam Seiko scored 4/11 against Cape Verde and 0/11 against Libya and Nigeria.

Perennial shooter Fayed Baale was switched off, scoring 0/8 attempts.

All the above players can be lethal from a distance and as seen, they each had a game in which they contributed heavily. The biggest problem was that, only 1 or 2 players were fired up in a particular game, and the others were not a threat.

The players needed to find themselves and become threats in every game, this would draw defense to the perimeter and create space inside for the bigs to operate.

Size/ Paint protection

This is a song that has been sung for a while and it was going to be one of our biggest problems.

42 of Nigeria’s 62 points against Uganda were scored in the paint. Libya also scored (34) almost half of the team’s 71 against Uganda in the paint. Uganda on the other hand scored just 20 and 16 against Nigeria and Libya respectively from the paint.

The opposition always attacked Uganda with drives to the rim and given the size disparity, they found it an easy avenue to utilize. To make matters worse, Uganda’s big men, Titus Odeke and James Okello were very inefficient inside the opposition Paint. They combined for a total of 6 points in the paint in all the 3 games and a total of 10 rebounds.

This goes a long way to show you how poor the team was in that aspect of the game. The only big man who tried both defensively and offensively was Brandon Sebirumbi but he fouled out in 2 of the 3 games.

This is the problem that the Silverbacks face and they could become a much bigger threat if a solution can be found.

Rebounding

The Silverbacks might have allowed an average of 16 offensive rebounds to their opponents, but they were fortunate enough not to be punished severely, with Cape Verde and Nigeria scoring only 9 and 14 second-chance points respectively.

On the other hand, the Silverbacks picked an average of 13.3 offensive rebounds but they weren’t lethal enough to punish opponents for this scoring a total of 25 second-chance points against Nigeria and Libya.

In all the Silverbacks games, this aspect of the game is among those in which all teams almost squared up with neither side using it as a big advantage for them.

Perhaps in the next window, the Silverbacks can capitalize on that and become a force.

Bench Points

The bench did not contribute much and this affected the entire performance of the team.

10 bench points against Cape Verde, 14 against Nigeria, and 25 against Libya.

Ivan Muhwezi exploded against Libya scoring 15 of the 25 bench points.

The average minutes played by the bench players, Emmanuel Womala 30.6, Ivan Muhwezi 18.1, James Okello 12.1, and  Fayed Baale 11.3.

Joel Kayiira and Edgar Munaba played a total 4:21 and 1:02 minutes respectively while Stanley Mugerwa did not play any game.

Just like Ivan in that last game against Libya, the bench needs to step up big. The team needs many option and if the bench cannot provide a solution, other players should be looked it.

Transition

Libya exposed the Silverbacks’ defense in their final group game. They scored a total of 10 layups and 1 dunk. Every time Uganda seemed to make turnovers, there was quick transition and a bucket for Libya.

Libya also scored 15 fast break points compared to 4 for Uganda, and this shows how slow the team was in transition in that game.

Against Nigeria, the Silverbacks scored just 6 points from turnovers compared to 18 for their opponents. 

Fouls

Uganda did an excellent of drawing fouling averaging 18.3 per game. As a result, they were sent to the free-throw line 59 times scoring 40 of them.

On the other end, Uganda had a total of 50 fouls, 16.67 on average, the 3rd lowest this window. They sent the opponents to the charity line 15.6 times per game.

Robinson Opong was our biggest threat in this aspect, he was sent to the line 21 times, and he scored on 20 occasions.

Consistency

This was the biggest factor for the team and the lack of it cost us to an extent.  In all the aspects of the game, there were fluctuations seen from the different players. Opong cut off against Libya, Muhwezi was quiet in the first 2 games then he rose to life against Libya.

Tonny Drileba very sound offensively against Cape Verde and Libya but AWOL against Nigeria.

Adam Seiko contributed enormously in the first 2 games but looked burnt out in that final game thus playing just 5 minutes despite being in the starting five.

This lack of consistency may have various causes. Zainah Lokwameri, a former player on the Women’s National Basketball team (Gazelles), pointed out during a space on X (formerly Twitter)

“In a tournament, you just pray to God that as a player, you’re consistent and you’re able to bring to the table what you can. The dynamics of the game change in basketball,  today Opong has 39, and the next day someone else is supposed to lead, that’s why it’s a National team.”

“One of the things that affects players in such a tournament is fatigue, it could be muscle pains but mostly fatigue. Sometimes the mind wants but the body may not take you there” she added.

During the same space, the National team manager, Albert Ahabwe expressed his opinions on the team’s performance.

“Given the challenges that we had, the withdrawals from the squad especially because of injuries and other commitments by some of the players, I believe that coming out of the window with a win was a successful campaign”

He went ahead to elaborate on what the results of the first window mean for Uganda in the bigger picture.

“It means that our fate is squarely in our hands. We know who we have to beat, what we have to beat them by, the results that we require in the second window for us to be able to qualify for Afrobasket”.

About the plans of the team heading into the final qualification window, he said

‘We also know what we need to do between now and February, we have a whole year in terms of putting together resources, putting together the type of Squad that we need to get the results that we are looking for. But most importantly, we know what to do against some of the opponents that we didn’t have a clear picture of for example, Libya had been out of African basketball for so long that, nobody knew what to expect but we know them now and we know how to prepare for them”

“The window has opened our eyes toward which requirements are needed for this particular qualifiers and we will know what to do when the time comes” he said.

He concluded by stressing the factor of early preparation, “I’m very confident in the amount of talent that we have out there and I’m confident if we get the resources and they get to practice like other teams do, we shall make some noise. The difference between us and those North African countries is preparation and how much time they spend together”

With one victory in the bag, Uganda is in 3rd place with a -7 points difference. Cape Verde won all the 3 games while Libya won 2. Nigeria registered 0 victories and has a -33 points difference.

Uganda has a big opportunity to qualify for the Afrobasket if they can register at least 2 victories in the next window.  In case they can defeat Nigeria with a huge margin, they might as well be on their way to the Afrobasket.

The team will be very confident coming into the second window and will hopefully be much more prepared given that rumors about potential sponsorships have been in the wind for some time.

The team also lacked the services of Ishmail Wainright, Arthur Kaluma, Deng John Geu, Jimmy Enabu, Keiran Zziwa, Eric Rwahwire, Brandon Davis, Jonathan Komagum, and many more. The team shall be hoping for a return of some of the big names and hopefully they can send Uganda to a fourth consecutive Afrobasket.