It was the end of the road for South Africa’s Cape Town Tigers in their quest to be crowned the 2024 Basketball Africa League (BAL) champions, following their overtime 86-96 defeat to Angola’s Petro de Luanda at BK Arena in Kigali, Rwanda, in Wednesday night’s semifinal.
The Tigers’ spirited performance down the stretch saw them take the game to overtime, after they had trailed by 11 points (55-66) at the end of the third.
“I thought we fought, we didn’t give up and we took the game to overtime. It was played in very good spirits and highly competitive,” said Tigers head coach Flosh Ngwenya.
“It’s huge back home, that we advanced to this stage of the tournament. It gives everybody hope. What we have done has never been done before by a South African team.”
Nkosinathi Sibanyoni, who had made BAL history with an all-time high 25 rebounds in the quarterfinal against Morocco’s FUS Rabat two days prior, finished with a double-double (12 points and 13 rebounds), while another consistent performer, Samkelo Cele, led the team in scoring once again (19 points).
Petro de Luanda, who are participating in their fourth consecutive BAL season, showed their experience and bench depth on their way to the crucial victory which pits them against Libya’s Al Ahly Ly in Saturday’s BAL Finals.
The Angolan champions’ bench delivered 57 points, with Nicholas Faust scoring a game-high 23 points.
In the second semifinal played earlier in the afternoon, Al Ahly Ly edged out Nigeria’s Rivers Hoopers in another overtime game of the day (89-83), behind Jo-Lual Acuil Jr. 27 points.
The Tigers will now face the Hoopers in the third-place game on Friday at 8:00 p.m. CAT, while Petro de Luanda will take on Al Ahly Libya in the 2024 BAL Finals on Saturday at 4:00 p.m. CAT at BK Arena.
The 2024 BAL season is reaching fans in 214 countries and territories in 17 languages through free-to-air and paid TV broadcast partnerships with the African Union of Broadcasting, American Forces Network (AFN), Canal+, NBA TV, SuperSport, Tencent Video, TSN, TV5 Monde, Visionary TV and Voice of America (VOA), and livestreaming on the NBA App, NBA.com, BAL.NBA.com and the BAL’s YouTube channel.
