REG BBC has won the men’s pre-season competition for the fourth time in a row as IPRC Huye regains its glory in front of The Hoops Rwanda in the women’s category.
Rwanda Energy Group BBC started this tournament on a high with a new signing from APR, Pascal Niyonkuru finding himself in his new club which could prove to be a huge signing for REG Power.
REG had no obvious challenge until they faced off IPRC Kigali coached by John Bahufite. The Kicukiro based club also added new players Including the duo of a guard, Armand Cubahiro and a center Eric Muhayumukiza from their counterparts of IPRC Huye.
In this tournament, IPRC Kigali used also a young promising point guard from Espoir BBC, Olivier Turatsinze and another center from Nigeria, Nnandi Emmanuel who didn’t convince the audience.
In the final match, IPRC Kigali started well and finished the first quarter ahead of REG, 14-13. The next two quarters were dominated by REG, 11-14 and 05-20 before IPRC tried to pull back which was not easy to close the gap of 17 points. It ended 53-67, Belleck Bell scored the highest points in the game, 27
In the women’s category, IPRC Huye had their revenge against the league titleholder, The Hoops Rwanda. Last season, The hoops beat IPRC in the final of the BKBNL closing tournament and it was the first league defeat for IPRC Huye since July 2019. This time, IPRC ousted them for the trophy. 19-20, 15-10, 18-15, 19-14 to make it 71-59. Nicole Urwibutso scored 27 points alone
Both REG and IPRC Huye defended their pre-season trophies and pocketed 1 million RWF each while the runners up, IPRC Kigali in the men and The Hoops in the women received 800.000 RFW each. APR BBC took third place in both men’s and women’s categories. They were awarded 500,000 RFW in each category.
