Inaugural Varsity Basketball competition in the pipelines

University basketball has received a major boost following the news that the sport will for the first time encompass a Varsity Sports competition that will feature eight university basketball teams.

The competition is an addition to the already established varsity sports competitions such as Varsity Athletics, Varsity Football and Varsity Cricket, to name a few. At this stage, the competition is scheduled for 5 to 14 October this year and will only include men’s teams.

Wits, who have won the University Sport South Africa basketball tournament twice in consecutive years (2016 and 2017), are confident of a spot in the top eight at this year’s tournament which will be used as qualifiers for the inaugural Varsity Basketball tournament.

“I think it’s significant that we’re the national champions, so we’re fairly stacked in terms of the quality of players that we have, and I think for this year, our preparations have seen a number of returning students,” said Tshiamo Ngakane, coach of the Wits men’s first basketball team.

“We’re fairly stable as a team and the preparations [ahead of Varsity Basketball] has been around the kind of stability and base that we’ve built over the last two years. We’re fortunate that we have eleven players from last year returning.”

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