Can UCU Canons halt Namuwongo Blazers’ undefeated run?

National Basketball League

Women: Jaguars v UCU

Men: UCU v Namuwongo 

The Namuwongo Blazers are seven games away from completing the National Basketball League (NBL) regular season unbeaten. 

Among the fixtures with the potential to deny Stephen Nyeko’s men that remarkable slice of history is tonight’s second-leg encounter with the UCU Canons. 

Form says Namuwongo will walk out of the Lugogo Stadium with their 17th win of the season, but UCU can raise their level of play. Just as they did when the two sides met in the first round last month. 

Namuwongo won 82-72 but the game was tied 72-72 with 02:26 to play in the fourth quarter. In other words, the Canons can hang with the NBL’s finest, as the first 37:34 minutes of their first-round meeting with Namuwongo show. But they are just as capable of empty stretches of basketball, as the rest of that game proves.  

Since then, Nick Natuhereza’s UCU have won four and lost three, including a defeat to Rez Life and a 31-point thrashing at the hands of the Oilers.

UCU are 10-7 and can look on the season with a degree of satisfaction because their squad, featuring some significant new additions, is making clear progress. The setbacks have looked like growing pains more than anything else.

In Namuwongo, UCU are up against a juggernaut, a team that has forgotten to lose. Fans will be hoping UCU can push them as hard as they did in the first-round encounter. And who knows what would happen this time if UCU had a shot to win the game with two minutes to play?