Rwanda’s representative in the 2022 edition of the Basketball Africa League (BAL) 2022, Rwanda Energy Group (REG) Basketball Club have signed five new players ahead of the upcoming tournament. The showpiece is scheduled to tipoff on Saturday, March 5 in Dakar, Senegal, and run through up to 15th of the same month. The new players that REG has added are: Rwandans Ntore Habimana (based in Canada), Axel Mpoyo (based in USA) and Pierre Thierry Vandriessche (based in France), as well as two Americans, Cleveland Thomas and Anthony Rashad Walker. Habimana, Mpoyo and Vandriessche feature for the national basketball team and were part of the squad that head coach Cheikh Sarr summoned for the recently concluded FIBA World Cup qualifiers that took place in Senegal late last month. Thomas, 28, is a shooting guard who last played for Apollon Patras of the Greek Basket League. His counterpart Walker, also 28, is a forward who has played for teams like the University of Texas - Arlington College, and Beroe Basketball Club in Bulgaria. The 5 players join Dieudonne Ndizeye whom REG signed earlier, and a number of players that the team had in its own ranks. Ndizeye plays for Patriots in the local league. Meanwhile, the team also signed American tactician Robert John Pack Jr as their head coach for the BAL. The 53-year-old will be assisted by Henry Mwinuka who has been in charge of the club during the national basketball league. Robert John Pack Jr. is a former National Basketball Association (NBA) player where he played 13 seasons during career with Portland Trailblazers, Denver Nuggets and Dallas Mavericks among others. He launched his coaching career in 2009 where he agreed to become the assistant coach at New Orleans Hornets, which later changed the name to Pelicans. In the BAL 2022 tournament, REG were placed in the Sahara Conference alongside AS Sale (Morocco), Dakar University Club (Senegal), Seydou Legacy Athletique Club (Guinea), Ferroviário da Beira (Mozambique) and BAL 2021 runners-up US Monastir (Tunisia). The Sahara Conferences group phase will take place at the Dakar Arena in Dakar, Senegal, from March 5-15. The top four teams from the Sahara conference, and four from Nile Conference, will qualify for the BAL playoffs, which will feature a single-elimination tournament and finals at Kigali Arena from May 21-28.
