After a two-month stoppage caused by the increase in covid-19 cases in Uruguay since the end of November, the Uruguayan Basketball League resumes the dispute of its semifinals at the Antel Arena this Thursday.
From 7.15pm they will play Trouville-Urunday Universitario and at 9.30pm they will play Aguada and Nacional. Both series are played to the best of five games and are tied 1-1.
The preview: Urunday with one less foreigner
The Uruguayan League 2019-2020 began in October 2019 and between March and the end of October it was stopped due to the coronavirus pandemic. As a social club that is Urunday Universitario, it was one of the most affected by the pandemic.
When the competition was resumed, one of its national chips, Mauro Zubiaurre, had already emigrated and for economic reasons it opted for three low-budget foreigners, one of them Corbin Jackson, with experience in Uruguay after playing El Metro 2019 in Unión Atlética (it was the who denounced an offer from a Peñarol player, Agustín Zuvich, to go back in a match). The others were Jack Rauch and Patrick Bacon, both on their first outing from the United States.
The new stop led to the club not being able to bring the three back. He opted for Jackson and then an offer came to Rauch to play for Argentina, which lowered the costs to make him arrive and it was decided to have him again.
Trouville, on the other hand, had already chosen after the first stop to play with Argentine foreigners and will be able to count on them again: Federico Mariani, Leonardo Mainoldi and Damián Tintorelli.
Urunday Universitario, who hit a historic hit in the quarterfinals, eliminating Malvín 3-0, won the first game 86-72 but then Trouville reacted by winning 99-90. Pocitos’ Reds defeated Hebraica Macabi 3-1 in the quarterfinals, who had been reinforced by Esteban Batista and Argentine Matías Sandes.
Aguada-Nacional in a warm intern
The other semifinal is marked by the point that the Uruguayan Basketball Federation (FUBB) gave Aguada sanctioning Nacional for violations of sanitary protocol.
On the court, Nacional won the first game 97-91. Then, several players from the tricolor squad contracted covid-19, the second game was about to not be played, finally they showed up with a team full of youths and near the time of the beginning the vice president of the institution Alejandro Balbi burst onto the field who was not authorized to enter according to sanitary regulations, to withdraw his team. The FUBB launched an administrative investigation and ended up sanctioning Nacional with a fine, suspending its compliance officer Wilson Pírez for two years and losing the game.
The two teams will have the same national chips that started the season and the foreigners that they had when the League was suspended in December. Nacional managed to make them enter the country first through a direct leadership move with the National Directorate of Migration.
For this match Carlos Cabezas suffers from a muscle strain and although he will be part of the squad, he will surely not be from the game.
