16th September, 2013
Nigeria women’s national team, D’Tigress will depart the shores of the country on Wednesday for Maputo, Mozambique venue of the 2013 Afrobasket holding from 20-29 September.
This disclosure was made by the assistant coach of the team, Aderemi Adewunmi while commenting on the state of preparedness of the Nigerian team for the biennial championship.
Adewunmi, who conceeded to the fact that the D’Tigress did not have enough time to train as a team because of late arival of some foreign based players at the Abuja training camp, said they hope to finalise their strategies when they arrive Maputo.
“We are ready to depart for Mozambique on 18 September (Wednesday) and continue our training when we get to Maputo. The late arrival of some invited foreign based players affected our plans but we are hoping to finalise our strategies before the championship begin on Saturday,” the First Bank club of Lagos coach said.
As at the timing of filing this report, a couple of players are still expected to join the D’Tigerss in their camp in Abuja.
The D’Tigerss are two time champions of the tournament but have won the championship since 2005 when the tourney took place in Lagos.
Nigeria have been drawn in Group-B with defending champion Angola, 2007 champion Mali, Cameroon, Cape Verde and Kenya.
Hosts Mozambique is seeded in group-A where they will confront the likes of Africa most successful women basketball playing nation Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, Algeria and Zimbabwe.