Club Vows To Rediscover Form In Basketball League

The Head Coach, First Deepwater Club, Lateef Erinfolami, has vowed that his team will play like the champions at the resumption of the Zenith Bank Women Basketball League in July.

Erinfolami told newsmen in Abuja that his team failed to live up to expectation during the league’s first phase which ended last weekend in Abuja.

The Lagos-based defending champions finished second in the 10-day competition held at the Indoor Sports Hall of the Abuja National Stadium.

“My players didn’t quite rise up to the challenge of being defending champions throughout the duration of this first phase”.

“They did try their best, but things didn’t quite gel as we would have wanted”.

“Perhaps some may say they didn’t give their best, but I feel they still performed well.

It was just that the performance was not quite the best as defending champions,’’ Erinfolami said.

The three-year-old club had dethroned First Bank of Lagos last season after coming second in their first season in the competition in 2009.

They, however, lost 44-60 to their Lagos rivals in their ninth and final game of the first phase of the competition after winning their first eight matches.

The team thus finished second behind First Bank, with 16 points from eight wins in nine matches, two points behind the former champions who won all their nine matches.

The coach, however, attributed their loss and overall performance to a rebuilding process in his team.

“We have a lot of new players, and we have been struggling as a result of this. But I can’t blame the players, because they have never played at this level of the game before.”

“Moreover, they only showed signs of being jittery against First Bank, and this may be because of their opponent’s name, our rivalry or the fact that they are new players,” he said.

Erinfolami said that the players would have overcome that problem by the time the league’s second phase resumes in July in Akure.

“It will be a better First Deepwater on display then, and our match against First Bank will be better than this. The girls would have overcome this problem then,” he said.