Flawless Nigeria retain #AfroBasketWomen title

DAKAR (Senegal) - The dominance of Nigeria continued at the FIBA Women's AfroBasket as they won their second straight title against Senegal 60-55 in a tightly contested Final on Sunday night at the magnificent 15,000-seater Dakar Arena. 

D'Tigress, who registered a perfect five-game unbeaten run at the biennial competition, looked perfect all tournament on their way to win their fourth African title. 

Otis Hughley Jr and his side ensured that Nigeria become only the second team to defend their title having won it in 2003 and defended it at home in Abuja in 2005. 

Nigeria started the game on top of the proceedings and led both the first and second quarters to enter the half time break with a 32-24 lead and even though Senegal made a strong comeback in the third quarter to tie the game at 54-up with 2:24 to play in the last quarter, D'Tigress dug deep to eventually win the coveted trophy. 

"We have been here before. We prepared ourselves as though every game would be like this. It is just that the previous games did not give us live training outside of playing ourselves so when that came, we had already been programmed. It is entrenched in our DNA to be ready for a tight game, make smart decisions and take care of the ball and that is what we did," explained Hughley Jr. 

Evelyn Akhator scored 14 points and made nine rebounds and her amazing performance throughout the tournament earned her a place in the Tournament Five. 

Her teammate Ezinne Kalu will smile her way back home after being named the undisputed TISSOT MVP as she joined Akhator in the Tournament Five. 

Astou Traore stood out for Senegal with 13 points and six rebounds to earn her place in the Tournament Five deservedly so. 

Earlier in the day, Mali saw off Mozambique 66-54 to win bronze for the second edition in a row much to the distress of the southern Africans who put in a good shift this tournament. 

Touty Gandega, who inspired Mali with 12 points and six assists, earned her way to the Tournament Five for guiding her side to the podium. 

On the other hand, Leia Dongue scored a game high 22 points and five rebounds but her efforts were not enough to help Mozambique win a medal at this tournament.

BREAKING: Nigeria’s D’Tigress beat Senegal to remain African champions

August 18, 2019 Tunde Eludini

The Nigeria women national basketball team, D’Tigress, have successfully defended the FIBA Women’s AfroBasket title they won two years ago.

In a keenly-contested final match played on Sunday at the magnificent Dakar Arena which had as much as 15 thousand fans watching, the Nigeria women beat host Senegal 60-55 to win back-to-back continental titles.

As in previous Senegal games over the past few days, there was a deafening atmosphere at Dakar Arena but D’Tigress held their own.

With Sunday’s feat, D’Tigress became the first team to win back-to-back FIBA Women’s AfroBasket titles since Angola followed up their 2011 triumph with another in 2013.

To make it to the final, Nigeria eased past Mali, 79-58, in Friday’s first semifinal. Hosts Senegal needed to work extra hard to overcome a fearless and determined Mozambique team, 60-57, to return to the championship title game for the third time in a row.

Both Nigeria and Senegal have emerged as the best teams from the 12-team tournament and it has come as no surprise that each reached the final after four wins in as many games.

Nigeria defeated Tunisia (75-26), Cameroon (106-39), DR Congo (79-46) and Mali (79-58) by an average of 42.5 points while Senegal beat Cote d’Ivoire (77-36), Egypt (85-47), Angola (88-54) and Mozambique 60-57 by an average of 29 points.



After losing to Nigeria two years ago – not once but twice in Bamako – 12-time African champions Senegal were hoping to become the first team to win the tournament at home since the D’Tigress claimed the 2005 continental in Abuja.

With D’Tigress successfully completing their mission, attention will now shift to the male team, D’Tigers that are meant to compete at the FIBA World Cup in China once the needed funds are provided.

Draw results in for African Pre-Qualifiers of the 2020 Olympic Qualifying Tournament

DAKAR (Senegal) - The official draw for the African Pre-Qualifiers of the 2020 Olympic Qualifying Tournament took place on Saturday in Dakar, Senegal. 

The ceremony featured FIBA Vice-president Hamane Niang, newly elected FIBA Africa President Anibal Manave, FIBA Africa Regional Director Alphonse Bile, members of the FIBA Africa Central Board and National Federations. 

The top six countries at the ongoing FIBA Women's AfroBasket will play at this tournament including the two Finalists - hosts Senegal and the reigning champions Nigeria who were also Africa's two representatives at the FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup 2018 in Spain. The teams have been drawn in two groups. 

The results of the draw are as follows:
Group A: 

Nigeria, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of Congo

Group B: 
Senegal, Mali, Angola

The African Pre-Qualifiers for the Tokyo games will take place from November 14-17 at a country yet to  be determined.

Teams will play a round-robin format in their specific groups with the winner of Group A facing the second team in Group B while the winner of Group B will come up against the second ranked team in Group A in the Semi-Finals.

The two winners of the Semi-Finals will not play a Final as they will automatically advance to the 16-nation FIBA Women's Olympic Qualifying Tournament (WOQT) where teams will be divided into four tournaments (groups) in February 2020. 

The top three teams from each of the three WOQTs will qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. 

The Pre-Qualifiers for the Tokyo Games is part of FIBA's major new qualifying system, which also changes the way of qualification for the next FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup. 

Speaking at the draw ceremony, FIBA Africa Regional Director Alphonse Bile said, "We need to play with other teams from other continents. It is not a surprise that the two teams that played at the FIBA Basketball Women's World Cup are the ones that will play the [FIBA Women's AfroBasket 2019]Final tomorrow."

Prior to this format, the winner of the FIBA Women's AfroBasket automatically qualified for the Summer Olympics. 

Both the reigning Olympic champions USA and hosts Japan will take part in the new pre-olympic qualifiers.

Tokziby:
What type of qualifications be this?? That's too much. We are Africa's best and we need no more qualifiers except they don't want any African representative. By the time u include almighty USA and Japan in a pre-qualifier how do u expect us to qualify.

That rule is a complete Bullish*t!!!

How can an Olympic tournament not have a continental representative

naptu2:
African sports administrators are very slow.

The massive gains that our heroes past (people like Tessema) fought for are being reversed and African sports administrators can not see it.



Once upon a time, it was virtually impossible for African teams to qualify for global competitions like the World Cup and World Championships. People like Tessema fought to ensure that Africa got adequate representation, but that's being reversed at the moment.


I'll use an existing example to illustrate my point. Once upon a time, teams like Red Star Belgrade and Steau Bucharest could win the European Cup. Then the system was changed and a new competition called the Champions League was introduced.

Gradually some countries were given more spots than others (previously, only champions played in the Champions League/European Cup, but now second and third placed teams from some nations are allowed to play in the competition).

Then, some countries were made to play a qualifying series in order to get into the competition, while others could skip the qualifiers.

And now it's impossible for teams like Red Star and Steau to win the Champions League (the odds are stacked against them).


This is the case with the proposed enlarged FIFA World Cup and it's also the case with FIBA's new Olympics and World Cup qualifying system. Soon there will be no African teams in those competitions.