August 25, (THEWILL) – Nigeria’s senior men’s national basketball team, D’Tigers got back to winning ways in the opening game of the 2021 AfroBasket Competition taking place in Kigali, Rwanda on Wednesday when they beat Mali 81-73 to start off on an encouraging note.
The confidence boosting victory was necessary for several reasons. A few weeks ago at the Summer Games in Tokyo, Japan, D’Tigers were eliminated from the group stages after three straight losses and the AfroBasket tournament is coming soon after.
Secondly, Nigeria was ranked a low 7th in the FIBA Power Ranking for the AfroBasket competition, which was mostly due to the disappointing absence of most of the class of NBA stars and some other European based players that represented Nigeria at the Olympics but were notably absent in the team prosecuting the country’s hopes in Kigali.
However, coach Mike Brown kept faith with the D’Tigers and buoyed by the confidence reposed in him by the Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF) is making the best of the situation and they have deservedly kicked off their campaign by beating Mali.
D’Tigers began with a starting five composed of Ikenna Ndugba, Emmanuel Omogbo, Ben Emegolu, Stephen Domingo, and Daniel Utomi. It was their plan to put the Malians on the back foot immediately and they executed it swiftly.
Domingo was making his debut for coach Brown’s charges and was on fire early. He made 11 points to see D’Tigers overrun the Malians and wrap up the first quarter with a 28-12 lead. That lead was cut short to a single point at half time, although Nigeria held their lead 44-43.
Brown kept providing instructions from the sideline and D’Tigers regained control of the game in the third quarter. An inspiring display from substitute Jordan Ogundiran’s way was particularly profitable for Nigeria until a slip allowed Mali to catch up.
D’Tigers did not repeat the lapses of the Olympic Games and played a better fourth quarter to keep the Malians behind and at the final whistle led 81-73 to take a victorious mindset into the rest of the AfroBasket competition.
The quality at their disposal may be less than what D’Tigers boasted of when they shocked the world by ending the unbeaten run of the US men’s basketball team but they were in good form competing against the challenging Malians, who fought valiantly until the end.
For their next match in Group C, D’Tigers will clash with the Morans of Kenya on Friday, August 27 while their final group game will be against Les Éléphants of Cote d’Ivoire.
Nigeria is still the highest-ranked team in Africa but D’Tigers have won only one Afrobasket title after 12 attempts. Near misses meant they finished in second place four times and third three times. Brown is looking for nothing less than another first place finish and they have started with that in mind.
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
