Tigers have to execute game plan to overcome FUS Rabat

One thing that Cape Town Tigers head coach Florsheim Ngwenya is well aware of is that his team needs to execute better than they did in the previous two games of the 2024 Kalahari Conference.

Cape Town Tigers will clash against FUS Rabat on Tuesday night at SunBet Arena in Pretoria with a must-win task.

The Kalahari Conference hosts must beat FUS Rabat to keep their Basketball Africa League (BAL) Playoffs aspirations alive.

“The bottom line is we really have to execute,” Ngwenya acknowledged.

The reigning Basketball National League champions are chasing their first win in the Kalahari Conference after losses to Dynamo Basketball Club and Petro de Luanda.

What can the Tigers do differently to avoid their third straight defeat of Season 4 – their fourth straight loss in the BAL since May 2023?

“Everybody on this team can score. The defense, that’s a concern for me,” an adamant Cape Town Tigers captain Lebesa Selepe explained when reflecting on the 186 points they allowed in two games.

“Any time a team scores 100 points on you in a 40-minute game, you are going to be in trouble. We just need to get stops,” Selepe added.

Offensively, Ngwenya says they “encourage our guys to penetrate from time to time; sometimes you hope they make threes, sometimes you don’t.”

The Kalahari Conference leader FUS Rabat resume their campaign on Tuesday after a three-day break, and guard Soufiane Benmhine insists there’s still job to be done.

The Moroccan international player noted: “We are not done yet. We still have a few more games to play in the conference. We are going to prepare each game at a time. Hopefully we’ll reach our objective.”

Talking about Jonathan Jordan’s role on the Moroccan champions’ rotation Benmhine admitted how crucial the American guard has been for the BAL first-timers: “Jordan’s role in the team is really important. He’s a very positive guy on and off the court, and we love him as a teammate; he influences our game on the court. We depend on him a lot for one-on-one, and three-point shots – he can do it all.”

This will be the first BAL clash between Cape Town Tigers and FUS Rabat.