Saturday IPRC-Kigali Vs CSK 2pmPatriots Vs 30-Plus 4pmEspoir Vs UGB 6pm The second round of the 2016/17 basketball league gets underway Saturday after a three-week break, with defending champions Patriots taking on 30-Plus at Amahoro Indoor Stadium. Patriots, who ended the first round at the top of the table, will be looking to pick up where they left off before the break as they continue to bid for a second successive league title. “The league has been off for three weeks, but the team has not been off, we have been training throughout because we need to keep leading the table until the end of the regular season,” said Patriots captain Olivier Kamirindi. The Kagugu-based side lead the league standings with 17 points from nine games, witha win ratio of 8:1, the same tally as second-placed Rwanda Energy Group (REG), while Espoir are third with 15 points. 30-Plus are second from bottom with 10 points, one above Cercle Sportif de Kigali (CSK). In other games, former champions Espoir will be up against United Generation Basketball (UGB), who are in seventh place with 12 points, while fifth-placed IPRC-Kigali (15 points) will lock horns with CSK. The three-week break was intended to allow the national team to compete at the just-concluded 2017 FIBA-Africa Zone V Championships which took place in Cairo, Egypt from March 11-18. Moize Mutokambali’s team won bronze and missed out on a chance to qualify for this year’s FIBA Afrobasket finals. Gold medal winners Egypt and Uganda (silver) will represent Zone V at the biennial event slated for August 17-31 in Congo Brazzaville. editorial@newtimes.co.rw
