Monday, June 9 Quarter-finals APR Vs Rivers Hoopers 4pm US Monastir Vs Petro de Luanda 7pm Rwanda’s representatives in Basketball Africa League (BAL) 2025, APR Basketball Club, will face Nigeria’s Rivers Hoopers in the playoffs quarterfinals on Monday, June 9 in Pretoria, South Africa. The Nigerian team finished as the fourth seed, while APR finished as the fifth. ALSO READ: BAL 2025: APR stun reigning champions Petro de Luanda During the seeding games that took place over the weekend, APR handed defending champions Petro de Luanda a heavy defeat, beating the Angolan giants by 18 points in a commanding 75-57 victory. This was only the second time Petro de Luanda had lost by such a wide margin in BAL history, the first being an 89-71 semi-final loss to Zamalek during the league’s debut season in 2021. APR outclassed the Angolan giants in almost every aspect of the game. By the end of the second quarter, Petro de Luanda had already had 12 turnovers compared to APR's six at that stage of the game. Rivers Hoopers, on the other hand, were subjected to an 89-81 defeat against Tunisian outfit US Monastir in a seeding fixture on Saturday. ALSO READ: BAL 2025: Al Ahli Tripoli subjected to first loss of the season In a previous interview, APR head coach James Maye Jr., said that his team is healthy and in good spirits ahead of the playoffs. “All of the players are healthy. We got a chance to be able to rest after the Nile Conference. We did a lot of extra therapy, a lot of getting on the court and just nurturing our guys to get them back to health,” Maye Jr. said. Talking about the addition of South Sudanese star forward Nuni Omot, he said the trade is “very important” for the team, as he described him as a guy that can score and also control the team’s pace to avoid “sporadic” tendencies that showed up during some games in the Nile Conference. “Sometimes you need to have somebody to help balance that. We think Nuni does that,” he noted.
