African women’s basketball champions, D’Tigress will have a short period of time to camp for the African Women’s Olympic Pre-Qualifiers games in November, but the NBBF has plans in the place to secure the win, President of FIBA Africa zone 3 and former NBBF board member Rtd. Col Sam Ahmedu has told brila.net.
“The 1st leg of Pre-Olympic qualifiers against Mozambique is a very short window, D’Tigress would not be able to camp for 2weeks as the foreign-based players would be released 4 days before the qualifiers by their clubside but the Federation has made arrangements on camping for 3 days before the game.”
The Four-time AfroBasket women champion will face host Mozambique and Democratic Republic of Congo in Group A from November 14-17, Sam Ahmedu also revealed that the Federation will hold back on the game plan for the team ahead of the qualifiers
“part of the reasons why the D’Tigress has been successful is because we keep our plans hidden because we are in an era were teams spy on other teams, so our game plan will be kept within ourself in the meantime.”
The winner of Group A will the second team in Group B while the winner of Group B will come up against the second ranked team in Group A in the Semi-Finals. The two winners of the Semi-Finals will automatically advance to the 16-nation FIBA Women’s Olympic Qualifying Tournament (WOQT) where teams will be divided into four tournaments (groups) in February 2020.
Nigeria women basketball national team have failed to qualify for the last 3 editions of the Olympics with their last appearance in Athens 2004.