D’Tigers top Africa’s qualifiers for China 2019

Despite losing their first games of the qualifiers at the final window of the 2019 FIBA World Cup, Nigeria’s national basketball team, the D’Tigers, have emerged the best on the continent going to the World Cup, .

National Daily gathered that the D’Tigers lost two games against Cote D’Ivoire and Senegal in the qualifiers contested for in Abidjan over the weekend, but already done enough in the previous windows to finish top ahead of their biggest rivals, Senegal.

Nigeria lost the last game 84 to 63 points against Senegal despite their superior statistics, (11-7 steals, 20-16 assists and more 21.4 points from turnovers as against 12.5 points made by their opponents), slipping to a defeat due to inaccurate shooting.

In hit-match reaction, Nwora said the team would have loved to finish the qualifiers on a high with a win, but it did not go as expected.

With Nigeria and Senegal tied on 22 points, Nigeria nicked the top spot with superior points’ difference against their arch rival.

Although Senegal defeated Nigeria by 21 points on Sunday, D’Tigers got the job done in Lagos when they inflicted a 28 points defeat on their west African counterparts. In Group E, Tunisia are first with 22 points ahead of Angola with 21 points.

Nigeria will be berthing in China as the winner of the FIBA World Cup African qualifiers zone with a superior points difference of +268 as against Tunisia who had +264 in Group E.