Nigeria’s senior men’s basketball team, D’Tigers, is out of contention for a spot in the Paris 2024 Olympic qualifying tournament after they lost their second game in the pre-qualifiers held in Lagos.
D’Tigers lost 77-68 to Mali in the second group tie and a 93-87 defeat at the hands of Senegal in the first game ensured the Coach Ogor Odaudu-led side is technically out of the tournament held at the Eko Convention Centre in Lagos state, southern Nigeria.
The team started the game on a good note leading 17-15 in Q1, 43-38 in Q2, and 61-53 in Q3 but suddenly became a shadow of themselves in the last quarter which saw them manage only 7 points as against Mali’s 24.
The last quarter was a repeat of the Matchday 1 tie with the Senegalese which D’Tigers let go of a wide margin lead to eventually lose narrowly, an occurrence, Coach Odaudu jokingly dubbed the curse of the fourth quarter.
In the post-match briefing, Odaudu had no words to explain the defeat and took responsibility for the loss.
He said “I don’t have any explanation for what happened today. We lost, I take all the blame, we did all we could do on the court but it just didn’t work out in our favour. I don’t know how to explain it but we should not have lost this game we performed poorly I think the two games we lost were games we should have won but sport is a funny thing and it just happened. There is absolutely no explanation, it’s all on me to take the blame and hopefully, we’ll move forward.
“I think it a fourth-quarter curse for us. There were a lot of factors actually. We just didn’t finish well too many mistakes. When we should have protected the ball we didn’t protect the ball enough. Also, in decision-making, we were down and then we panicked and thought that we were going back into the game by jacking up 3s (3-pointers). I think we should have been smart enough to know that we were going to claw our way back into the game, one point two points at a time but we panicked, saw that time was running out and everything became a free ball. Next time I will make better decisions,” he said.
Point guard, Uchenna Iroegbu, who contributed 26 points including 6 three-pointers, and Kaodirichi Akobundu, who blocked four shots were the stand-out players for Nigeria.
Iroegbu says they have to look ahead and everyone involved in basketball in Nigeria has to do better going forward.
“It’s unfortunate when you lose, sometimes you start to feel empty because you feel like you could have done more, and in this game winning is everything, winning is how you advance, not your individual stats.”
“All of us especially how we performed in this competition all of us can do better, the players, the coaches, the federation when you lose everybody has to look themselves in the mirror and think about what they can do to improve for next time,” he said
Nigeria is the first team to be eliminated from the tournament and will for the first time since the 2008 Beijing Games will not participating in the Olympics.
For Mali, with a win in hand, they will battle Senegal for the top of the group on Thursday.
In the first game of the day, Cameroon outclassed Guinea 104-74.
The winner of the tournament will earn a place in the 2024 FIBA Men’s Olympic Qualifying Tournaments.
