Afrobasket: Nigeria’s D’Tigers beat Cameroon

Nigeria’s national basketball team, D’Tigers, on Sunday recorded its third straight win in the ongoing African Nations Basketball Championship (Afrobasket) 2013 in Abidjan.

In the match that ended at about 11p.m, the team beat Cameroon by 91-84.

The D’Tigers had earlier beaten Mali 74-59 in the opening game and Congo 93-75 in the second game of the group stage.

The Cameroonian team that bowed to the Nigerian side had also beaten Congo 74-43 and Mali 89-35 in the two previous group stage matches.

In other matches played on Sunday, Congo also in group D beat Mali 87-77 while Tunisia in group B beat Rwanda 83-81.

Coach Ayo Bakere told newsmen after the match that it was a strong and tension-filled match.

“Clearly, the two sides came out with strong forces, I am happy we came out the winners in the end’’, he said.

D’Tigers forward, Ike Diogu told newsmen that the team’s presence in the tournament was for serious business.

“I said earlier that we will approach every match with new techniques; that is what happened.’’

Some supporters of D’Tigers who spoke to NAN said the defence had remained a source of problem to the team.

One of them, Nnanna Francis, a Nigerian, urged the technical crew to do some works on the defence to avoid creating scoring chances for the opponents.

“We saw similar openings in the two previous matches, today; the loopholes were visible’’, he said.

Another supporter Ochuko Efe, described the team as endowed and capable of winning the title.

“We saw how they rose to make the difference, at some point they were behind, this is clearly a team with great endowment and potential’’, he said.