Boost for Kenya Morans as foreign legion check in

Kenya Morans forwards Valentine Nyakinda and Fidel Okoth have completed their four days coronavirus quarantine and are expected to link up with the rest of their national teammates for training today at Nyayo Stadium.

The Morans are preparing for the Fiba Afrobasket round one qualifiers that will be held in Rwanda from November 25 to 29.

Kenya are in Group “B” together with  Senegal, Angola and Mozambique.
The second round of qualifiers will be held in February at a venue to be decided.

The top three teams in the group will qualify for the biennial African finals.

Otula and Okoth were part of the Kenya team that made history by appearing in their first African championships final, in Bamako, Mali last year.  They lost to DR Congo.

The duo returned from Tanzania where they were turning out of for Savoi in the country’s community basketball tournament, losing in the quarters.

Otula also played a crucial role for Kenya during the Afrobasket pre-qualifiers in Nairobi in January where Kenya saw off a tough South Sudan to book their ticket for the qualifiers in Rwanda.

The qualifiers were originally scheduled to be held in Dakar, Senegal.

“We arrived on Saturday from Tanzania but could not start training immediately because we had to follow the Ministry of Health Covid-19 protocols which included quarantine,” said Otula.

Also reporting to the training camp on Wednesday was Algeria-based Ariel Okal who arrived in the country last week but had to attend to family matters.

The versatile, former Kenya Ports Authority player turns out for Union Sportif Setif in Algeria and is expected to bring to the team plenty of energy.

Kenya Basketball Federation chairman Paul Otula yesterday said the team’s training camp in expected to be full by the end of next week as coach Cliff Owuor works on getting a winning formula against tough opponents.

Basketball is among the sports that were classified as contact sports by the  government.

Sports PS Joe Okudo, however, a fortnight ago gave Morans permission to start preparing for the Afrobasket qualifiers provided they adhered to the set guidelines.
Senegal, Mozambique and Angola named their teams for the qualifiers and reported to camp last month. 

Will Voigt, coach of former African champions Angola, called up mainly experienced local and foreign players to his provisional squad of 18 players.

The squad has been in Lisbon, Portugal for specialised two-months training and will fly straight to Kigali from Europe for the qualifiers.

 Clearly Kenya have their work cut out for them in a very competitive pool.  Coach Owuor has only two weeks to get his boys fighting,  match fit.

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