31st July, 2013
A lot of African national teams tend to associate their under-achievement at major tourneys to lack of international competition as well as poor preparations.
Two weeks ago, Senegal forfeited their opening game at the recently ended FIBA U-19 women’s World Championship as they arrived in Lithuania a day late after the tournament opening.
At the time, Birahin Gaye, the team’s head coach, revealed to FIBA.com that they had only six days of preparation before the tournament.
This might not be the case for the majority of teams at the 2013 Afrobasket to be staged in Abidjan from 20 to 31 August as most national teams have now been practising for over a month.
Nigeria received a lot of credit last summer after a successful FIBA-Olympic Qualifying Tournament (OQT) and a reasonable showing at the London Games.
Expectations are high around the D’Tigers as they finished third in the 9th Borislav Stankovic Cup back in June.
Coach Ayodele Bakare and his ‘new’ squad are currently holding a training camp in Florida, where they played a three-game series against Venezuela, although most of the London Olympians are yet to join the team.
The 2011 champions, Tunisia could not indicate more determination to defend their African title as coach Adel Tlatli and his army have been preparing since since early June with a participation in the seven-team Mediterranean Games.
In that tournament, they finished third after playing against the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (MKD), Italy, Serbia and Turkey. Their North African neighbours Egypt and Algeria also took part in the event.
In mid-July, Tunisia held a three-team friendly tournament in Monastir that included Cote d’Ivoire and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).
Angola might show up in Abidjan with a slightly different team than that of two years ago, including head coach Paulo Macedo and naturalised American-born Reggie Moore.
The 10-time African champions started their preparations in mid-June on home soil, and are currently holding a training camp on the outskirts of Madrid, Spain.
From the preliminary squad, only promising star Yanick Moreira has not joined the team for academic reasons.
With the clock ticking fast, pundits of the sport are waiting to see how four weeks of preparations and international training camps would work out for all the teams once Afrobasket gets underway in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.