Nigeria’s D’Tigress picked up their second win of the 2017 AfroBasket Women’s Championship with a 37 points blowout of DR Congo on Saturday night in Bamako, Mali.
Just 24 hours after the Nigeria female basketball team, D’Tigress ‘s first game of the Championship, Sam Vincent’s team showed no real signs of fatigue, racing to a 15points lead in the first quarter.
They took the foot the pedal and DR Congo paid them in kind snatching a narrow 4points lead in the second quarter.
It was a different story when the ladies returned for the concluding half taking the third and fourth quarters 11-8, 32-9 respectively.
Only Cecilia Okoye returned as started from the first game, but it was Atonye Nyingifa led the points board scoring 13points
The victory moved Nigeria to second position in Group B with two wins from two and four points secured.
Egypt top the group, also securing a heavy victory in their second game. The Egyptian girls defeated Guinea 109-78 points.
Only four teams from each group progress to the next round.
D’Tigress next face Egypt on Sunday in a game that could edge them one step closer to picking a quarter-final ticket.
We really need to focus on boxing out because we are going to play bigger teams. So, I think as a team, we need to focus on boxing out and not allow our opposition to get the second chance shots.”
While admitting the need to be more decisive against their opponents, Kalu is not worried about their chances against bigger teams.
“It doesn’t make me worry, it just shows that we definitely need to buckle down on it. We just have to take it one game at a time. We need to focus on shooting, tossing out, boxing out and focus on the second chance shots so that when we play big team we don’t have to worry about these things,” Kalu concluded.
COMMENTS