Basketball in Africa

By Pius Ayinor
Lagos

The Nigerian female national basketball team, the Lady Tigers began their very first FIBA World Championship campaign late Tuesday with an 84-50 loss to former champions Russia. The result simply followed the bookmakers' preview.

The Nigerian ladies, however, gave the world number two team a run for their cash at the start of the game leading temporarily 11-5 in the first quarter just as the jump ball was taken in Barueri, Brazil. The Russians, however, recovered quickly and won the first quarter by three points. And when they recovered, it took a good turn for them as they eventually led through the break with 10points with the result at 39-29.

"First match is always a tough one, but still we managed to win. I think we can grow through the competition and I hope we can do a better job on our next match. It's going to be a hard one, but I'm optimistic," Russia head coach Igor Grudin said in obvious reference to the early part of the match.

The head coach of the Nigerian side Kevin Cook reacted to the result of the game like this."I think we gave them a hard time in the first 20 minutes. But then we lost control of the game. I hope we can learn from this and try to improve our game so that maybe someday we'll be able to play in equal conditions against these teams during the 40 minutes. Russia did a very good job, they're really prepared for this competition," he said.

After the break, the big size, experience and exposure of the former world champions came to fore as they found ways around the Nigerian defence, especially with their three pointers. The game and the margin of winning were clearly determined by the output of the teams in the third quarter. From then on the Europeans had dominance despite fast pace of the Nigerians.

Tonight (11.30pm Nigerian time) the Lady Tigers will battle their opponents from China the last game of Group C. The match will be shown live on SuperSport. The Chinese lost their opening match to the USA by 119-72. Nigeria and China were billed to play the USA and Russia respectively last night with analyst giving them no backing against their teams. Their clash today, therefore, is expected to produce the third and fourth teams of the group. The top three teams of each group qualify for the next round of the competition.