Head coach of the Women’s Senior National basketball team, Sam Vincent is optimistic about D’Tigress chances of making an impressive outing at the 2017 Women’s Afrobasket tournament holding in Mali.
An impressed Vincent who arrived the team’s camp on Wednesday night was at the team’s second friendly game in two days against Raptors Basketball club at the Indoor Sports hall of the Lagos National Stadium, Surulere.
Despite suffering another defeat against Raptors with the game ending 78points to 65 in favour of the men’s team, the coach said there was a marked improvement in the way the team played as they were able to reduce the 16points deficit in their earlier 71 points to 55 loss to just 13 in less than 24 hours.
“I feel great, the ladies are working hard, we got a good training camp in Florida. We have a solid local training camp and I feel we have good players here who are ready to compete. I feel good about our chances going into the tournament.”
On the areas in which to improve in the coming days, Vincent said, “Defensively, we have to be better, offensively, we have to get a little bit sharper.
“The good thing is that the tournament is not starting tomorrow. We still have about 7 days and by the time we actually play the game, we will be a little bit sharper than we were tonight,” he said.
The 54year old who led D’Tigress to their second Afrobasket title in 2005 is confident in the ability of the present crop of players in camp to bring back the title.
“I definitely feel we can do it again. I feel like this is a great team that we are putting together and now we just have to focus on the last 4 or 5 days before we head to Mali, so I feel good about our chances.”
