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By Ebenezer Bajela
Vice President of the Nigeria Basketball Federation, Babs Ogunade, is hopeful D’Tigress will break their Olympic duck and win their first game at the global sports showpiece at the 2024 edition in Paris, The PUNCH reports.
Despite losing two of their three games at the FIBA Women’s Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Antwerp, Belgium last month, D’Tigress still managed to qualify for the women’s basketball event at the 2024 Olympics.
Following the completion of the draw that took place on Tuesday at the Patrick Baumann House of Basketball in Mies, Switzerland, Rena Wakama’s team were drawn in Group B alongside Australia, Canada and France.
African champions D’Tigress are competing at the Olympics for the third time having qualified for the Athens 2004 and Tokyo 2020 editions.
However, D’Tigress have never won a game at the Olympics and having done so at the World Cup, Ogunade hopes they will be able to bring an end to the winless streak
“We have never won any Olympic game before and we want to start by doing that now,” he told The PUNCH.
“We’ve won at the World Cup beating Argentina, Turkey and Greece but we’ve not done the same with the Olympics and it is important we start with a win. I would love us to win every game but we must take it one step at a time.
“I spoke with the coach yesterday (Wednesday) on the need to prepare very well and also that we have to strengthen our team and bring in more players. We have a long list of players but we are trying to look at how many of them we can get.
“But our first target is to get a win because we know this is the Olympics and it is important that we do very well.”
Over the years, poor preparation and lack of funds have hampered the country’s campaign at global tournaments but Ogunade said the federation was working to checkmate this.
“The ministry, federation and NOC are involved and all hands must be on deck,” he said on the team’s preparations.
“We’ve sent the budget for the camping and we are waiting to get a response from the ministry. We have a date and all we need is a nod from the ministry, who will hand the team to the NOC because the IOC interfaces with the NOC.”
D’Tigress, who are Africa’s sole representatives in the basketball event, are poised for a consecutive appearance after participating in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Reigning world champions United States are drawn in Group C against Germany, Japan and Belgium.
Group A has Serbia, Spain, China and Puerto Rico.
The first two teams in each group qualify automatically for the quarter-finals of the tournament while the best two third-place teams also stand a chance of qualifying for the quarter-finals.
The basketball event at the Paris 2024 Olympics holds at the Decathlon Arena – Stade Pierre Mauroy in Lille.
The Women’s Olympic Basketball Tournament is scheduled for July 29 to August 11.
