BUJUMBURA September 29th (ABP) – The holiday closing tournament and fundraising to support the first activities of the basketball renaissance program by the Burundi Basketball Federation (FEBABU) was closed last weekend, a check on the site by ABP has revealed.
On the program, the semi-finals were played on Saturday.
On the girls’ side, the Back Eagle team was largely dominated by the Gazelles who won easily with a river score of 109 points to 49 from the young Black Eagle team.
The second game was between the Gladiators and the Young Sisters. The latter dominated the game at the start but the Gladiators changed tactics in the third quarter and took the victory with a score of 57 points to 42 behind Young Sisters.
On the men’s side, the Kern and New Star teams crossed swords and Kern led the match until the 3rd quarter time and it was during the 4th quarter that the New Star team took matters into their own hands and won. the ticket to the final by beating Kern by the score of 65 points to 58 of Kern.
The highly anticipated match was the one that would pit teams Dynamo and Urunani, two traditional rivals, against each other. The Urunani team led the game from the start until the end of the 4th quarter thanks to the size and the technicality of its players and towards the last 7 minutes of the end, the Dynamo team got up and dominated literally the match, scoring on a few occasions the 3 points to make up the difference thanks to his players Cliff and Romus, making the Urunani fans and players’ tremble. It took the entry of the talented point guard Brian Kavakure on the Urunani side to change the pace of the game and give the victory to his team by a close score of 72 points to 71 of Dynamo.
The final took place on Sunday and was between the Gladiators and the Gazelles teams at 11 a.m. The Gladiators team dominated the game from the start of the match scoring successively, side the Gazelles, the players also exploited their systems to break the rhythm of the rival team and thanks to the shots of the three successful points, the Gazelles came to the end of the game and won the cup with a narrow 64 points to 63 Gladiators.
On the men’s side, the final between the Urunani and New Star teams, the latter beaten in the quarterfinals by Urunani, New Star had sworn revenge against Urunani.
The fit Urunani formation and thanks to the encouragement of his many fans dominated the match until the end thanks to the good defense and attack from players like Brian Kavakure, Orly, Landry and Davy. The Urunani team were crowned champions thanks to their victory by a lightweight 60 points to 47 from New Star.
At the end of the match, prizes such as telephones, antennas and Canal + decoders were awarded to the best players while the winning teams in addition to the cups, envelopes were given to them.
The Gazelles team had a cup and envelope of 1,500,000 BIF, the Gladiators 750,000 BIF, Urunani a cup and envelope of 2 million BIF and New Star 1 million Fbu.
The 15 teams participating in the tournament each had an envelope of 300,000 BIF.
In his speech, the new president of FEBABU, Apostle Jean Paul Manirakiza, promised to revolutionize Burundian basketball by setting up infrastructures that will be able to host regional and world competitions. He promised to restore order and discipline within associations, within clubs and team supporters by putting in place ballistic laws.
He also promised to inject part of the funds raised on the various occasions in the clubs and thanked the companies, the individuals who supported the tournament before launching an appeal to the responsible government to support sport in general and basketball in particular.
Note that the fair play cup was awarded to the Hippos team.