Thursday (build-up game) Rwanda Vs Egypt 6pm The national basketball team head coach, Cheikh Sarr, has pointed out key areas that his team should focus on ahead of the African Basketball Championship (Afrobasket) that gets underway next week in Kigali. The 2021 Afrobasket finals tournament runs from August 24 through September 5, at Kigali Arena. In an interview with the Rwanda Basketball Federation (Ferwaba) this week, Senegal-born tactician Sarr stressed that his team has made some progress, but still has some work to do in the defensive aspect of the game. “Defensively there are some principles that are lacking. We have to work on one-on-one situations and the boxing-out because teams beat us when they take a lot of offensive rebounds,” he said. These were some of the observations that Sarr made while assessing the team’s performance from two recent friendly games they played against Senegal and Guinea last week. Rwanda lost both games; 83-91 to Guinea, and 60-87 to Senegal. Sarr also urged his players to improve their shooting efficiency. “We were very offensive (in the friendly games). We tried to shoot a lot but with little efficiency. We have to correct this too. In the run-up to the tournament’s kick-off, hosts Rwanda has lined up two warm-up games against giants Egypt on Thursday, August 19, and August 21. The Pharaohs are one of the teams that had arrived in the country by press time on Wednesday, along with South Sudan, Central African Republic, and Uganda.
