The University of Johannesburg outfit intend to hit the ground running when the inaugural Varsity Basketball tournament continues at the Wits University Sports Hall on Friday.<\/p>\n
UJ had a satisfactory opening weekend in the Johannesburg event, winning three of their four matches to leave them second on the log.<\/p>\n
There are three rounds left and UJ basketball manager Anton van Rooyen said they would be taking each game at a time, with their initial focus being on Friday’s clash with Vaal University of Technology (VUT).<\/p>\n
“As we approach the second half of the tournament we will not look further than our next match,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The first game against VUT is vital to our chances of making the top four. If we can overcome that one it will make qualifying for the semifinals much easier.<\/p>\n
“That is the big challenge for us at this stage.”<\/p>\n
The UJ squad have set themselves high expectations and while Van Rooyen was happy with their opening performances he said the players were disappointed at losing to city rivals Wits.<\/p>\n
“For them it is all about bragging rights, so they will want to show what they can do this coming weekend.”<\/p>\n
He said the team’s efforts during the power-plays had been integral to their success.<\/p>\n
The tournament features an innovative power-play period where for two minutes every point scored counts double.<\/p>\n
“The highlight was definitely doing so well in the power-plays where not a lot of points were scored against us,” said Van Rooyen.<\/p>\n
“We had to dig deep during the game against UCT, but we managed to win comfortably [77-53] in the end.<\/p>\n
“Some of the lessons we learnt were that we need to be mentally prepared for every game and not to get ahead of ourselves.”<\/p>\n
He added that they were preparing for more intense competition this weekend as the fight for places in the semifinals intensified.<\/p>\n
Besides VUT, UJ will be up against Tshwane University of Technology and UP-Tuks in their final two round-robin matches.<\/p>\n
The squad were enjoying the opportunity to experience Varsity Basketball, said Van Rooyen.<\/p>\n
“Most of the seniors were very excited because of the long wait and are looking forward to the next challenge.<\/p>\n
“The rookies were a bit nervous, not knowing what to expect, but they will be better prepared mentally for the second half of the tournament.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The University of Johannesburg outfit intend to hit the ground running when the inaugural Varsity Basketball tournament continues at the Wits University Sports Hall on Friday. UJ had a satisfactory opening weekend in the Johannesburg event, winning three of their four matches to leave them second on the log. There are three rounds left and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":58746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1852,3745,1733,3743],"class_list":["post-22999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-more-sport","tag-basketball","tag-uj-basketball","tag-university-of-johannesburg","tag-varsity-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22999\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}