Mali\u2019s National Men Basketball Team on Tuesday shocked basketball enthusiasts in Nigeria and beyond as they beat D\u2019Tigers, 77-68 to pick their first win at the ongoing FIBA Pre-Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Lagos.<\/p>\n
Nigeria, who lost to Senegal in their opening game, looked set to bounce back from the defeat but unfortunately could not deliver when it mattered most.<\/p>\n
D\u2019tigers had dominated the game with some superlative displays to the delight of the fans that thronged in to support them at the Eko Hotels Convention Centre, Victoria\u2019s Island.<\/p>\n
D\u2019tigers ball play in the first three quarters looked most likely that they had learnt some lessons from their initial loss to Senegal.<\/p>\n
They took the first three quarters recording 17-15, 43-38 and 61-53 and had the entire hall rooting for them but went into oblivion at the fourth, final and most important quarter.<\/p>\n
A resolute Mali team came out stronger than expected and came from behind to change 61-53 deficit to outscore 24-7 in the final quarter of the game and coast home their victory.<\/p>\n
Head Coach of D\u2019tigers, Ogoh Odauda blamed his tactics and regretted the loss to Mali, citing the loss as a fourth quarter curse and innabilty of his team to hold on to their lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a sad loss, and we let everyone down, we are deeply sorry for the eventual result but this could largely be blamed on poor preparations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to win for Nigeria but unfortunately we could not have a better result; these things happen in basketball, but I don\u2019t blame anyone but myself.<\/p>\n
Uchenna Iroegbu who contributed immensely to the team, also expressed sadness and hope that things will improve in future competitions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a sad loss, we could have done better but we regret the outcome of the scoreline which did not put us in good position.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just have to come together and see what went wrong and see how we can improve for a better outing next time,\u201d Iroegbu said.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Mali\u2019s Head Coach, Kaba Kante, attributed his team\u2019s victory against Nigeria as a very good one for them as it puts them in a comfortable position ahead of their final group match.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not afraid of any team, we are confident of ourselves and we know we can rise above any opposing team in the\u00a0 tournament,\u201d Kante said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mali\u2019s National Men Basketball Team on Tuesday shocked basketball enthusiasts in Nigeria and beyond as they beat D\u2019Tigers, 77-68 to pick their first win at the ongoing FIBA Pre-Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Lagos. Nigeria, who lost to Senegal in their opening game, looked set to bounce back from the defeat but unfortunately could not deliver […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":1351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[59,220],"class_list":["post-1350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-featured","tag-fiba"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1350"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1352,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1350\/revisions\/1352"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}