By Kevin Rademeyer, Sports Journalist.
Photo Credit: BAL
The ball went up in Rabat and the season began with urgency. No easing into rhythm, no tentative feeling out. From the opening possession, the 2026 Basketball Africa League Sahara Conference announced itself through pace, contact, and conviction. Six teams stepped onto the floor at the Prince Moulay Abdellah Sports Complex with clear intent, chasing four playoff places in Kigali and setting a tone that felt immediate and uncompromising.
Club Africain stepped onto that floor like they had been there before, even though they had not. Debutants in name only, they played with the composure of a team that understands the rhythm of pressure. Omar Abada and Jesse Jones Jr. each scored 21 points, but numbers do not quite tell you what happened. They controlled the tempo the way a veteran controls a conversation, knowing when to press and when to wait.
Across from them, ASC Ville de Dakar kept coming. They always do. Samba Fall shot eight for eleven, efficient and relentless, finishing with 20 points. But Club Africain owned the margins that matter. The rebounds. The second chances. The quiet possessions that win games before anyone notices. They outrebounded Dakar 42 to 33 and held on, 85 to 79, when the game tightened and the air grew thin.
Later that night, the arena changed its tone. FUS Rabat did not negotiate. They imposed. From the opening stretch, they built a lead that felt less like a run and more like a statement. By the time the fourth quarter arrived, the gap had stretched to 38 points at its widest, a number that sits just below the season’s largest and says everything about the night.
Abdoulaye Harouna led with 16 points, Anthony Pritchard added 13 and six rebounds, but the performance belonged equally to the collective. Defence that closed space. Offence that did not rush. And in the middle of it, Mouhamadou Diagne, who in just over 25 minutes gathered 14 rebounds, eight of them offensive, bending the game to his will in ways that do not always show up in highlights.
For JCA Kings, it was a difficult introduction. Fifty five points. The lowest total of the season so far. Still, even that number carries context. It stands above the lowest score in league history, a reminder that every new team begins somewhere, often in the shadow of a lesson.
If Friday was about arrival, Saturday was about response. The Maktown Flyers walked onto the same floor carrying the weight of debut nerves and left with something else entirely. A first win. A first moment. They beat JCA Kings 76 to 68, controlled in stretches, patient when it mattered. Jawad Adekoya scored 20, but more importantly, he steadied the game when it threatened to slip.
For JCA Kings, it was a second loss, and yet there are seasons where losing teaches faster than winning ever could. Then came the nightcap. The kind of game that reminds you why sport resists prediction.
Club Africain returned, this time against Al Ahly, a team that knows what it means to win at this level. For long stretches, the game tilted. At one point, Al Ahly trailed by 17. Then the tide turned, as it always does. Kevin Murphy hit from deep. Osayimwen Osifo rose for a dunk that shifted the lead. The arena tightened. The game became something else.
And then, in the final seconds, it became a story. Club Africain trailed by seven points with 15 seconds left. That is not a situation. That is an ending, most of the time. But games are not played in “most of the time.” They are played in the thin space where belief lives.
Abada hit a three. A spark, nothing more. Then an unsportsmanlike foul opened a door. Five points in a blink. Suddenly, there was air again. Moments later, Oussama Marnaoui stood with the ball and the weight of the night in his hands. Some players think in that moment. Others feel it. “He is built for moments like this,” his teammate Jawhar Jawadi would say later.
Marnaoui rose and released. The shot cut through everything. Noise. Doubt. Time itself. 69 to 68. Game over, but not really. Because games like that do not end. They linger, in the minds of everyone who witnessed it.
Al Ahly walked off with the quiet understanding that comes from losing something close. Zack Lofton spoke about learning, about chemistry still forming. It sounded honest. It sounded unfinished. That is the thing about this conference. Nothing here feels settled.
Four teams will move on to Kigali. That is the structure. But structure does not capture what is unfolding. This is a tournament defined by small margins and large emotions. By teams that refuse to stay within the lines drawn for them.
By players who understand that sometimes a season turns not on a strategy, but on a single shot taken without hesitation. Somewhere in Rabat, long after the crowd left and the lights dimmed, that ball from Marnaoui’s hands is still falling.