Defending Women basketball champions, Nigeria’s D’Tigresses 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 with a boosted charge by the National Sports Commission, NSC, with an increased welfare package, wasted no time to lay down their mission in Abidjan, beating the Rwanda girls with a total of 92- 45 points at the Palais des sports de Treichville.
This win also marks the DTigresses’ 25th win in a row in the tournament, dating back to October 2015.
The Rene Wakama’s team blew the Rwandees 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.
After the game, Nigerian Coach Rene Wakama said she is 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 mindset 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 Abi
