By 
Uganda Silverbacks made account despite falling short in their 87-79 loss to Cape Verde at the ongoing second round of the FIBA Basketball World Cup Qualifiers in Kigali.
Uganda’s Deng Geu opened the game with a layup in a highly contested first half that ended with Cape Verde by a single points (44-43).
However, Uganda headed into the fourth quarter trailing by 10 points after running out of steam in the third quarter.
With that deficit heading into the last, the onus was on Silverbacks to get back into the game and they responded in the right way as there were inspired by Ishmail Wainright to go on 17-0 run and closed that gap to only four points (80-76) with 00:57 left on the clock.
But Cape Verde pulled away to win the game by nine points after Wainright was fouled out.
Wainright finished the game with 21 points and three rebounds while Arthur Kaluma also had 18 points for Uganda.
William Tavares led all the scorers on the day with 22 points to inspire Cape Verde to it’s second victory in Kigali. Walter Tavares added 21 while Joel Almeida and Fidel Mendonça notched in 14 and 11 points respectively.
Despite this loss, Uganda have secured a place in the second round of FIBA World Cup Qualifiers.
This is after Mali’s elimination from the qualifiers for forfeiting another group A game. The Malian team failed to show up for their games against Uganda and Nigeria respectively.
The second round of the qualifiers will be played between August 2022 and February 2023.
