Defending Women basketball champions, Nigeria’s D’Tigress have sent an early warning to the rest of the teams after a dominant display against Rwanda in their first game of the 2025 FIBA Women Afro-Basket Championship in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.
The Nigerian girls who headed into the competition boosted with increased welfare packages by the National Sports Commission(NSC), wasted no time to lay down their mission in Abidjan, beating the Rwandan girls by 92- 45 points at the Palais des sports de Treichville.
The victory marked the D’Tigress’ 25th win in a row in the tournament, dating back to October 2015.
The Rene Wakama-led team blew the Rwandans away from the first quarter with a 17- 8 points lead, before going on to dominate the second quarter 28-17 points and eventually leaving their opponents far behind with a 26-12 points and 21-8 points gap in the third and fourth quarters.
France-based Elizabeth Balogun dominated the Nigerian team individual performance with a total of 18 points , 4 rebounds and 2 assists and was closely followed by Victoria Macaulay who plays in Turkey, with 13 points , 3 rebounds and 5 assists.
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Coach Wakama said she was happy with the win but stated that they have got high standards for themselves as a team and the focus is to keep improving with each game because the current squad is a new team.
” It’s a good win for us today and we can only control how we want to perform and for us as a team, we want to be the standard and this is our mind-set as a group.”.
” The 2023 team that won the Afrobasket is different from this team and for this team, this is our first game together ever and I understand that as a coach. I am still trying to figure out rotations and the players too are trying to know each other better on the court”.
” I must give credit to my girls because they all understand the reason why we are here and we want to remain professional and focused by taking each game at a time”, Wakama concluded.
The Team’s next game is against Mozambique on Monday as the quest to win the Women’s FIBA Afro basketball tournament for the fifth consecutive time continues in Abidjan.