By Ariel Okall
Editor: Brenda Mwaniki
Australian coach, Liz Mills, is the latest addition to the Kenya Morans technical bench. Mills has worked in the African continent for over a decade, working with clubs and also national teams. She brings on board great experience and a great scope of African basketball, a plus for the Morans who are hoping to qualify for the Afrobasket after a drought of 27 years. Her last national team gig was with African giants Cameroon and Zambia from southern Africa. Mills worked with Patriots BBC from Rwanda guiding them to a BAL qualifiers championship that was played in Kigali December 2019. It won’t be her first time in kenya since she has been here before overseeing the ZUBL.
With Mills on board we expect the Morans to improve immensely, the combination of Cliff Owuor, Liz Mills and Collins Gaya is indeed a solid coaching unit. This will definitely help in steering the Morans to the Afrobasket platform later this summer.
Speaking to Th3Doctor’s report, Mills has shared her expectations and what she is looking forward to in the February games.
“The great thing about the qualifiers in February is that Kenya has the potential to improve drastically from their performance in November. We have a number of areas we can improve on, everything is entirely manageable and I expect the team to reach a different level in the next round.”
Looking back at her time in Cameroon and comparing it with Kenya she says,
“Cameroon were highly favoured to qualify for the 2019 FIBA World Cup and had goals surrounding that campaign. Kenya is now looking to qualify for the 2021 AfroBasket for the first time since 1993. Whilst Cameroon is considered a very strong team in Africa, Kenya is one of the most exciting up and coming teams in Africa”
Kenyan fans are already excited to have her around she has a message for all basketball lovers around;
“I love the Kenyan mentality and the support the fans have for this team. I promise we’ll continue to make them proud.”
We hope she will be able to enjoy her stay in the country and experience the Kenyan hospitality and hoop culture. In her own words Mills says her focus right now is on the work ahead.
“Having only arrived back in Nairobi a couple of hours ago and heading straight to practice, I’m happy to be back in Kenya but I’m very much focused on helping the team qualify and then once this is achieved hopefully enjoy spending some time doing a little touring before heading back to Australia.”
She believes the Morans can improve on certain areas of their game moving forward,
“Four major areas I feel the team needs to improve on are half court offense, transition offense, executing on defense and locking down transition defense. I strongly believe we can make huge strides in these areas and we’ll see a dramatic improvement in the second round of qualifiers.”
From Th3Doctor’s Report, we welcome Coach Mills;
karibu Kenya and good luck.