By Akinwale Kasali
Against all odds, Nigeria’s Female Basketball Team, D’Tigeress has booked a place at the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan, in the Basketball event.
The D’Tigeress joined their Male counterpart who also booked a place at the world showpiece.
D’Tigeress sealed qualification for the championship on Saturday despite losing to host-Serbia in their second group game at the on-going FIBA Olympic Games Qualifying Tournament 64-70 points.
The African Champions, D’Tigeress had earlier defeated their African counterpart, Mozambique 81-51on Thursday in their first match.
Mozambique’s quest to qualify ahead of Nigeria suffered a heavy knock when they lost scandalously 49-124 points to current world champions, USA.
With the qualification ticket sealed, the Nigeria Basketball Federation set another enviable record for being the only federation in Nigeria to have two teams at the Olympics.
Host, Serbia, were in command of the first quarter which they won 22-21points, with D’Tigeress struggling to come into the game.
The brilliant moves of the Nigerian ladies were curtailed by the more experienced Serbian ladies.
Nigeria’s good works were undone in the second and third quarters as their inability to convert their chances saw Serbia work their way back into contention winning 22-12 and 16-12 to open a decent lead heading into the fourth quarter.
Nigeria’s senior women national team tried to rally back in the last quarter after cutting down the deficit to just 4 points with less than two minutes to go, but two successive turnovers by Ezinne Kalu put a stop to that.
Although, they picked the last quarter, 18-11, it was a case of too little too late against the host who, on the back of a vociferous home support, stood their ground to see out the game.
Kalu led the charge for Nigeria with 20pts, 3 rebs and 2 stls while Promise Amukamara scored 15pts, 4 rebs on the night.
Team captain, Adaora Elonu weighed in with 9pts of her own as well as 6rebs.
68.75% conversion rate from 16 free throw attempts, 38.98% from field goal attempts and 41.03% success from the trey points line summarised the performance of the girls on the night that they found it difficult for their shots to drop against the Serbians currently ranked 7th in the world.
Nigeria will take on USA in their last group game which is inconsequential, as Nigeria has already booked its place at the 2020 Olympics.
