The 2026 Basketball Africa League season ended the only way it could, with a moment no one fully saw coming when the season tipped off at the SunBet Arena in Pretoria, South Africa: The RSSB Tigers of Rwanda are BAL champions.
Down 20 in the final to start, playing in front of a Kigali crowd that had never witnessed anything like this, they clawed back. Point by point, possession by possession, until Petro de Luanda, the BAL’s most seasoned, most decorated franchise, ran out of answers, losing 90-88 on Sunday night.
Season 6 will live in the record books not only for all the electrifying moments but for its story of emergence, identity, and what happens when belief refuses to yield to pedigree.
From replacement team to champions
The RSSB Tigers were not initially invited to Season 6. They got a phone call less than a month before the tip-off after APR was withdrawn due to political sanctions. This left them with no time to develop a game plan, study their opponents, or face the weight of expectation.
However, the absence of pressure became their greatest asset. Throughout the Kalahari Conference in Pretoria, they played fiercely and without apology. They secured wins and adapted to the BAL’s physical demands, making adjustments every time they stepped onto the court. What started as a replacement story gradually evolved into a legitimate title contention by the end of the Kalahari Conference.
At the centre of this remarkable journey was Craig Randall II. His Season 6 campaign was historic, as he set a new BAL single-game scoring record, achieved over 300 points in the season, became the hope of an entire nation, and was awarded MVP honours. Randall was the offensive engine, the emotional anchor, and the standard-setter for a team that needed someone to demonstrate what fearlessness looked like.
This is what Randal said at the post-match conference: “This is everything to me. Three months ago, I almost gave up on basketball. I didn’t want to play basketball anymore. I didn’t think it was for me,” said Randall. “When I came here. James and Coach Henry did something for me that nobody has ever done – which was to allow me to be myself on and off the court. And I have a group of guys that I love because they did the same thing.
Randall continued: “I’ll be honest, I am not the easiest guy to deal with. My wife can tell you that, but when it comes to the game of basketball, I give everything I have,” he said.
“The president, when I spoke to him about making history, I told him, ‘I promise you we’re gonna make history,’ and I told you all the other day I was not coming to this press conference without this trophy.”
Mangok Mathiang laid the foundation in the paint, earning Defensive Player of the Year and establishing himself as one of the league’s most reliable big men. Head coach Henry Mwinuka, named Coach of the Year, accomplished something most coaches never get to claim: he took a team assembled under duress and led them to the championship in a single season without making excuses.
“The win is for the coaching staff and the players,” said Mwinuka. “We have been working so hard during camp. I appreciate them for stepping up during the game. I want them to go and enjoy now.
“It was really hard from South Africa to getting here. It was frustating sometimes, but I believe, I believe in the players and this credit goes to them.”
Ultimately, RSSB represented something much bigger than basketball. It reflected the resilience of Rwandan sporting infrastructure, built on adaptability, depth, and an unshakeable “next man up” mentality. When one door closes in Rwanda, another doesn’t just open; it bursts wide open. They didn’t just participate in Season 6; they made their mark.
Petro de Luanda: The Standard, Even in Defeat
To understand how significant RSSB’s title is, you have to understand what they beat. Six seasons in, Petro de Luanda are the BAL’s most enduring force. Four finals appearances. Championship pedigree. A structure and continuity that no other club on the continent has matched. They arrived in Kigali not as contenders but as the standard. For a stretch of that final, they looked every bit of it. Petro opened with a 20–0 vintage run: disciplined, physical, collectively executed. The kind of basketball that has made them the measuring stick for an entire league. If the game had ended at halftime, we would have written a very different story.
However, championships aren’t decided in stretches.
As the game wore on, foul trouble crept in. Aboubakar Gakou, who was pivotal to Petro’s rhythm and had a hot hand, was limited by both fouls and a slight injury at the worst possible time. Childe Dundão struggled from beyond the arc, and Gerson Lukeny couldn’t find the consistent rhythm that made him lethal in the semi-finals. The spacing that defined their offence never fully clicked, and in the fourth quarter, when they needed to run clean sets and manufacture stops, the disruptions had simply accumulated too much.
This resulted in a compounding of small fractures in a game that punishes everyone. Petro de Luanda remain the BAL’s most complete franchise. That didn’t change on Sunday night. What changed was that, for the first time in Season 6, they met a team that refused to be defined by the moment they were in.
The final that crystallised a season
The closing stretch said everything. Experience versus belief. Pedigree versus hunger. Two very different philosophies of championship basketball were decided by who made fewer mistakes in the moments that mattered most. RSSB won, and in winning, they handed Rwanda their first BAL title, a milestone for a franchise, yes, but more meaningfully, a return on investment which provided validation of an entire basketball ecosystem that has been built with a lot of intention over the past few years.
Season 6 had records set and broken, breakout stars, familiar faces and moments that will be replayed and debated for years. However, its defining image is a team that arrived as a footnote and left as champions.
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