23 May 2017

Kutlwano and Kalavango ladies as well as Spiking Stars and Mafolofolo men’s teams have qualified for the semi-finals of the Capital Motors Cup whose preliminaries were held this weekend in Molepolole.

Kutlwano ladies team beat Kalavango 2-1 to claim the top spot while the latter qualified by virtue of coming second.

In the men’s quarter-finals, Spiking Stars overcame Kutlwano 3-2 in a tightly contested game that forced each team to dig deep into their reserves for the top spot in Pool B.

After Spiking Stars easily won the first set 11-25, many spectators expected them to stroll easily into the semi-finals.

However, Kutlwano recovered to put up a gallant fight and won the two successive sets, but just when they only had a set to win to settle the game, Spiking Stars stormed back and won the fourth set to force the game into the deciding set which they won 25-19.

Spiking Stars coach, Kealeboga Mmekwane said the game was highly tactical as his opponents were hard to deal with.

“Kutlwano has high tactical awareness and they are very strong at the centre where they have the experienced Libion Mochae, so if you want to beat them you have to avoid serving your balls at that point. So what we did was spot their weaker players and served all our balls there, and that is how we managed to overcome them,” he said.

Mmekwane also said Kutlwano were strong on serves and needed strong blockers to neutralise them, hence his constant changing of players to bring in good blockers every time Kutlwano served.

Mmekwane said although his team managed to make it to the last stage of the tournament, they were still to gel as he has lost some of his key players. Notable in the absentees was their setter, Phenyo Thebeng, who has since found a new home at Police VI.

Mmekwane said the absence of Thebeng meant he had to try new setters in Topo Mokgopo and Odirile Molobe.

“We will have to work harder this week to ensure that they gel with the rest of the team before the next weekend’s games,” he said.

For his part, Kutlwano coach, Isaac Samuel admitted that the game could have gone either side, and that it needed the players to think harder.

“As a coach, you cannot teach everything and at some point during the game players have to apply their minds. I can’t blame my players though, they did well more so that we started preparations for the tournament a bit slowly, so mistakes were bound to happen,” he said.

Samuel, who also lost his trusted centre,Tiroyaone Otimile to Police VI, said the loss affected his team.

However, Samuel took solace in his ladies team and said he would work on their centre block ahead of next weekend as she was a bit slow. He also said the ladies team easily lost concentration during the game. ENDS