UNILAG 2022: Uniport on the brink as Unilag suffers football heartbreak, switches attention to Basketball

It will be a beehive of activities later today at the University of Lagos, UNILAG, as the 26th Nigeria University Games, NUGA, enters a decisive day with defending champions, the University of Port Harcourt, Uniport, on course to defend its title.

Surely, it is going to be a very busy day with some interesting and exciting final matches in some major sports like Football, Basketball etc at the UNILAG sports centre after Athletics ended at the Teslim Balogun Stadium on Thursday.

Here is a quick update for you on what to expect today and events that happened yesterday;

It will take a remarkable turn of events for the University of Port Harcourt to leave Lagos without the crown as champions of the NUGA 2022.

As at the close of the day yesterday, the defending champions were comfortably top of the medals table with 33 Gold, 13 Silver and 17 Bronze for a total of 63 medals.

Unilag was second with 16 Gold, 17 Silver and 10 Bronze medals, while Nile University sat third with 6 Gold, 6 Silver and 5 Bronze medals.

An update this morning showed that Champions have added five more Gold, four Silver and four Bronze medals to their total.

It was a quiet end to the day at the Sports Centre on Thursday after the Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU, male football team ended the run of the host school, Unilag, in the football event.

The OAU boys came from behind to claim the all-important final ticket after a 4-3 win via penalty shootout.

Both teams scored two beautiful goals to end the 90 minutes with a share of the spoils, forcing the game to a shootout. Unilag missed two of theirs, while OAU scored four to book a date with Unilorin, who defeated Nasarawa State University, Keffi, NSUK, in the first semi-final, in the final.

For the Unilag Marines and their fans, it was a sad end to a wonderful journey, but they lost to a team that was deserving of the win on the balance of play.

Yes, what the football Marines failed to do, the Basketball team successfully did with a comprehensive performance against Unilorin.

The Emmanuel Okolo-coached side proved just too good for the Ilorin school after an 87-64 win in the semi-final.

With the win, Unilag will meet favourites, Nile University, who saw off a difficult ABU Zaria 63-44 in the other semi-final.

With those results, both Unilag and Nile meet again after clashing in a very keenly contested match at the group stages.

Speaking exclusively to Pulse Sports Nigeria after their win over Unilorin, Unilag's coach, Okolo, said that his boys are now 'ready' to avenge that defeat.

"It's time to beat them now," Okolo told Pulse Sports. " We have gotten over that loss, we have sized them up and know our mistakes. So, we are going to take the game to them."

"We started getting better each game because we are host and didn't play any games in the preliminaries. So, we started getting better from one game to the other, We have gotten over our loss."