By Harry Awurumibe, Editor, Abuja Bureau
It was a game won by experience rather than determination as Nigeria’s hard fighting D’Tigress early Tuesday lost by a single digit to highly rated Team USA by 72-81 points in a game the Nigerians put up an impressive performance.
Although D’Tigress were rated lower to their opponents in the World Ranking,
the encounter was one in which Nigeria led after the first quarter but allowed the USA to bounce back to the game in the Second quarter.
The D’Tigress could not maintain the First quarter efforts and that was their biggest undoing in the game as they allowed USA to establish an unassailable lead.
But the Fourth quarter provided a sort of soul-lifting performance by D’Tigress with superstars like Adaora Elonu coming up big on the day just as the Nigerian ladies fought till the last whistle to lose by just nine points.
It was a remarkable improvement having lost to the same Team USA by over 30 points in a friendly exhibition game in the week before the Tokyo Olympics started.
The D’Tigress will square up against another top side, France in their next fixture, a game they must win if Nigeria hope to make it out of the group stage.
PromptNews reports that Nigeria’s male Basketball team, D’Tigers were themselves beaten 84-65 by Australia on Sunday as they failed to start their Tokyo 2020 Olympics campaign on a winning note.
Team Nigeria is also not faring better in other events as Aruna Quadri was the latest to crash out of the Table Tennis event in the 3rd Round.
Earlier Olufunke Oshonaike crashed out in the 1st Round while the sole representative in Taekwondo, Elizabeth Anyanacho; Gymnastics, Uche Eke among others have crashed out of the games.
