Nigeria’s men’s basketball national team, D’Tigers’ coach, Mohammed Abdulrahman has served up a strong hint that his players will put up a better performance on Friday when they take on Tunisa at the ongoing AfroBasket in Luanda, Angola,
Sports247 reports. Although many Nigerians praised the performance of D’Tigers in their 77-59 victory over Madagascar on Wednesday, Abdulrahman gave an elaborate technical analysis of the game and declared that it was not a smooth start for his lads.
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The soft-spoken tactician took another look at the run of play at Pavilhao Multiusos de Luanda and acknowledged that D’Tigers will have to do better against Tunisia, who defeated Nigeria in the previous edition, towards clinching their third AfroBasket title.
Abdulrahman noted, “We were a bit sloppy in the first two quarters. We were giving up two many points and transition.
“They were able to use their strength and run at us. After that, we were able to march into the third quarter, and we made the adjustments where necessary.”
Abdulrahman hinted that all the corrected errors from Wednesday’s game will help D’Tigers in their second group match this Friday, but admitted that they also need to add fresh ideas to overcome the highly technical Tunisians, as they did against Madagascar.
“We slowed them down to play half court offence, and we then had the chance to force them into making a lot of mistakes.
“That’s where we took care of the transition and offences. Along the line, we also made sure they could not get a second chance at our board,” Abdulrahman recounted.
He is now hoping for sterner stuff from his lads in order to beat the Tunisians, which would put D’Tigers en route to the next round in style – with two wins on the bounce.
Their final group game will be against less formidable Cameroon on Sunday.
