••• We are confident of doing well – Wakama
Team Nigeria’s women basketball squad, D’Tigress, will face off with Team USA in the first round of the Paris 2024 Olympics knockout stage of the women’s basketball tournament on Wednesday, August 7, 2024.
While Team USA will be looking for their 59th straight Olympic win en route to an eighth consecutive gold medal, Nigeria, the top-ranked African side and number 12 overall ranked team in the world, hope to cause yet another upset at the Paris Games.
The African champions shocked the world with their 75-62 victory over the No 3 ranked Australia in their opening match at the Paris Games. They were, however, beaten in their second game against host France 75-54 before bouncing back for a 79-70 win against Canada in their final group match.
Both sides last met during the Olympic qualifying tournament in Antwerp, Belgium, where the USA handed down a 100-46 harsh lesson to the African champions, but D’tigress head coach, Rena Wakama, is confidence that her girls are ready take on Americans, the team nobody wanted to face in the world, in the quarterfinals. “We are really excited because we want to play the best of the best,” Wakama told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) virtually from Paris.
“We believe that everything happened for a reason. We met them already in Belgium but we did not play our best, so we are looking forward to meeting them again on Wednesday.
“I think the first game that we played with them was an eye opener. We were able to watch the game and break down what we did wrong,
“We were able to see what we did well and I think now that our girls have the experience of playing against them, it would help a lot.
“We’ve also played about five games now, we have three friendly and three matches here so we are going into the game confidently.
“Playing well and we have a great addition to the team (Ezinne), that brings another level of intensity and experience to us. So, we are looking forward to doing what we do and doing it well,” Wakama said.
Having already beaten both Australia and Canada, there is no doubt that Nigeria have made everyone sit up and take note. But the USA are built differently to most teams, can D’tigress end their dominant force of this competition for so many years or will they continue that tradition, that is the question on many lips.
