Nemostars beat UCU Doves to win fifth league title

Aziz Damani National Volleyball League Finals Playoffs

Results

UCU 2 Nemostars 3 (Nemo wins series 2-1)

UCU Doves fought as hard as they could, but Nemostars once again pulled out all the stops to win their fifth league title in a hard fought 3-2(25-23, 24-26, 22-25, 25-19, 9-15) win over the Doves at the Lugogo Arena on Sunday night.

After Nemo defeated UCU in three straight in game one of the Aziz Damani National Volleyball League finals playoffs, it looked like the fight was finished, but UCU came back with a strong reply to win game two 3-1 on Saturday.

At the start of game three on Sunday evening, they were fastest out of the block comfortably taking set one.

They looked like they were in with a chance to take the title until the tail end of the second set when Nemo found a solution to their biggest issue, Mark Okurut's raving attacking play.

 Nemonstars' players celebrate with their patron Neko Muduse Ojala after emerging 2018 volleyball league champions at Lugogo. PHOTOS: Johnson Were

"Of course as a team, our biggest task during a match is to solve problems, we notice that when we served to Mark, he didn't have enough time to attack us and it also frustrated their libero (Elias Isiagi), whenever we sent the ball to Mark,"  Nemostars captain George Aporu said.

That ploy worked well for the better half of two sets until UCU found a solution to that particular problem as they won the fourth set to force a decisive set.

In the decisive, it became a case of experience over who wanted it the most. George Aporu and his teammates had an extra gear they exploited and no one could have stopped them as they secured the bag.

"The biggest building block to our win was the experience. In the fifth set we knew what we needed to do and we executed it all quite well," Aporu emphasised.

 Nemostars' George Aporu (13) attacks UCU during the league final

 UCU Captain Moses Odeke chose to take positives from the very disappointing experience.

"I think we really played our best game, we had high hopes but we didn't win. I am very proud of how my team played especially our setter Marino Oboke and Deo Anguria," he said.

After the difficult game one Coach Nasson Bwesigye preferred Oboke to Odeke and the latter did not put a foot wrong.