Wa Polytechnic Guard Kanton Samad has pinned his side’s failure to qualify for the quarter final of the Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges (UPAC) Basketball Championship on inadequate rest.
The third edition of UPAC is headlined by Rexona and had three tertiary institutions; University of Development Studies (UDS-Tamale) and host Tamale Polytechnic compete in Zone B with Wa Polytechnic. NJA College of Education pulled out of the competition at the last instance due to internal challenges.
UDS secured qualification from the zone as group winners following successive wins over Wa Polytechnic and Tamale Polytechnic in harsh conditions where temperatures peaked over 40 Degrees Celsius.
Speaking to Basketballghana.com after bowing out of the competition, Samad said:
“This game is a stressful game, we needed time to rest which we didn’t have by our side and its’ a game. We were unfortunate that we were beaten by UDS but I must it is out of stress that we were beaten in the game by UDS.”
He went on to highlight his side’s relatively diminutive stature as the reason aside stress for the loss stating:
“Looking at the physical stature, the body make up, most of our guys are short and looking at them, most of their guys are tall and we couldn’t match them in terms of the high balls they floated throughout the game and that was a disadvantage to us.”
Due to NJA’s absence, both Wa Polytechnic and UDS had to play back to back games with little intervals between. Wa Polytechnic lost 21-31 to UDS after beating Tamale Polytechnic 24-20 in the opening game. UDS followed up the win over Wa with a 24-20 victory over Tamale Polytechnic.
He however, sounded optimistic about the chances of the Upper West-based side in performing better in next year’s championship.
The 2016 UPAC Championship is supported by MTN, CAL Bank and Fanyogo in partnership with Basketballghana.com, TV3, Y FM and Ghana Sports Newspaper.
