Former Nigeria champions Rivers Hoopers continued their history making journey in the Basketball Africa League (BAL) following a 92-88 win over Tunisian side US Monastir today.
The quarter final win makes Hoopers the first Nigerian team to reach the semi-finals of the Prestigious continental basketball tournament.
Point guard Will Perry scored 33 points — the most by any player in the game, made five rebounds and assisted five times – to help Rivers reach the BAL last four at the ongoing tournament in Kigali, Rwanda.
Speaking after the win, Perry said: “I am feeling good, I’m really happy for Nigeria. They deserve it.
On the possibilities of Rivers Hoopers reaching the final, he said, “We will try to rest and I pray we win again.”
Alongside the Semifinal record, the Kings Men had become the 1st Nigerian team to win a BAL game, more than 1 match and the 1st to qualify for the Playoffs.
The Ogo Odaudu tutored Hoopers will face Libyan side Al Ahly, who defeated reigning champions Al Ahly of Egypt 86-77 for a place in the final of this year’s tournament.
In another semifinal, South African side Cape Town Tigers will face the winner of the quarter-final game between Senegalese side AS Douanes and Angolan side Petro de Luanda.
Tag: Afrobasket
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The Toronto Raptors Vice Chairman and President, Masai Ujiri, believes that Africa can achieve a lot when Nigeria moves in the right direction in all things, especially in the field of sports development.
Ujiri, the co-founder of the famous Giants of Africa GOA believes Nigeria and the continent at large can achieve far above average in sports if those in charge of administration and leadership push more investments towards the development of more sporting infrastructure.
The former D’Tigers player who spoke in Lagos said, “Nigeria is the heart of Africa; yes that’s why you have it positioned there. When Nigeria moves, Africa moves. Africa is looking up to Nigeria for the right moves. This continent is about the youths and we are inspired by them especially when we gather like this. They will continue to be leaders and they will change Africa. And Africa is already changing. We can really use sports to make the change. God has given us the opportunity to use sports to effect some change and our leaders must endeavour to move in the right direction.”
Masai spoke when GOA, the non-profit organization he co-founded returned to Lagos, Nigeria to host a youth basketball clinic at the Ilupeju Grammar School where they unveiled a basketball court in 2021.
The clinic welcomed Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who shared remarks with the youth and participated in on-court activities.
In addition, through their non-profit organization, the Archewell Foundation, the royal family members made a commitment to donate to Giants of Africa, supporting the construction of a new basketball court in Abuja, Nigeria.
This contribution bolters the organization’s ambitious initiative, ‘Built Within,’ a multi-year, 100-court investment in sports infrastructure across Africa.
“We are grateful to be joined by The Duke and Duchess of Sussex at this basketball clinic here in Lagos,” said Masai Ujiri.
“Basketball has the power to unite communities and inspire young people to reach their full potential.
Teaming up with the Archewell Foundation, we look forward to creating experiences for young people, empowering them to become leaders, while also fostering pathways to opportunity and hope.”
Prince Harry said “What you guys are doing here at GOA is truly amazing. The power of sport can change lives. It brings people together and creates community.”
Megan, The Duchess of Sussex added, “We are thrilled to be here. I lived in Toronto for seven years and that was the first time I’d heard of Giants of Africa – talk about full circle – never did I think we would be able to be here all those years later supporting the expansion of this incredible organization, through our foundation the Archewell Foundation. We’re so grateful and proud of all the work that you’re doing.”
In another talk with the media on the sidelines of the same event the ex-Nigeria international added, “Africa is blessed and there is something we have that nobody in the world has as much as us and that is the talent base.”
“The talent base in Africa is big and these youths you are seeing today, would surely become something big in life and so why can’t we give them the platform to succeed,” Ujiri asked.
The Giants of Africa is almost at the half way mark of its ‘Build Within’ initiative with some 38 basketball courts already built across Africa including in Lagos, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Tanzania, Rwanda, Morocco amongst others.
The organization has done effective basketball and leadership programmes in some other African countries including Somalia.
Masai who spoke likewise in January at the launch of The Arena in Lekki, Lagos believes that the government has bigger role to play in building more infrastructure so that upcoming talents can fulfill their potential.
“Already, we have built about 38 courts across Africa and we are going to open more soon in the summer; we are slowly getting there and we are right about half way to our target of 100 and you hear the Duke and Duchess of Sussex say they are going to donate a court to us through their Archewell Foundation in Abuja and that is an additional court that would built in Abuja,” he said.
“We need more basketball courts; more soccer fields as well as more stadia across Africa. We need more infrastructures not only in sports but even in entertainments as well.”
Masai is the first and only African-born President of a professional sports franchise in North America.
Im 2019, Masai led the Raptors to their first-ever NBA Championship and the first NBA Championship won by a team outside the United States in NBA history.
In 2003, Masai co-founded the Giants of Africa Foundation, based on the idea of using basketball as a means of educating and enriching the lives of African youth – both boys and girls.
GOA has used sport to help empower youth to dream big, hosting basketball camps and clinics for boys and girls in 17 countries across the continent.
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Nigeria’s representatives at the 2024 Basketball Africa League (BAL), Rivers Hoopers, will face AS Douanes of Senegal in one of four seeding games in the playoffs in Kigali next week.
The two teams played against each other twice in the Sahara Conference held last week in Dakar with each winning one of the ties.
Unlike previous formats where teams advanced straight to the knockout stage (quarterfinals), teams have been paired based on their performance across all three conferences in this season’s playoffs.
The KingsMen, who won the Sahara Conference, are third in the overall standings behind Kalahari Conference champions FUS Rabat of Morocco in second and Nile Conference champions Al Ahly of Egypt, who top the overall standings.
AS Douanes finished (4), Petro de Luanda (5), US Monastir (6), Al Ahly Libya (7) and Cape Town Tigers (8).
The winner between Hoopers and AS Douanes (Game 40) will play against the winner between Petro de Luanda and US Monastir (Game 39), while the loser of the tie will square up against the loser of Game 39 in the quarterfinal.
Other quarter final seeding games will see Al Ahly take on FUS Rabat, and Al Ahly Libya play Cape Town Tigers.
The seeding games will take place on 24-25 May, before the single-elimination playoffs tip off on Sunday, 26 May at the BK Arena in Kigali.
Meanwhile, the KingsMen arrived in Lagos this week to continue preparation for the playoffs but will leave for Kigali later this weekend. -
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Nigeria’s senior women’s national basketball team D’Tigress will open their 2024 Olympic Games campaign against Australia’s Opals in Paris France.
The Federation of International Basketball Association (FIBA) announced fixtures for the women’s basketball event yesterday.Complete fixture list
D’Tigress are drawn in Group B with hosts France, Canada and Australia whom they will face on July 29.
Nigeria’s second game against France will take place on August 1.
D’Tigress will round off their group stage campaign against Canada three days later with the hope of breaking the jinx of not making it past the group stage of the Women’s Olympic Basketball Tournament.
All the matches in France will hold at the Pierre -Mauroy Stadium, Lille. -
30 teams (16 Men’s and 14 Women’s national sides) will light up the University of Ghana courts as battle begins for podium places in the African Games 3×3 Basketball Tournaments from 18-22 March 2024.
The 3X3 women’s event will only have 14 teams on parade following the withdrawals of Liberia, Gabon.
Both sides were replaced by reigning queens Nigeria and Ethiopia despite being out of the top 16 ranking on the continent.
Only last week, Kenya and Botswana further depleted the field by withdrawing from the event.
However, despite the 14-team field, the battle for gold is certain to be fierce given that 2019 gold medalists Nigeria are not as hot as they were the last time out.
Both Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo who won respectively silver and bronze back in 2019 are in the mix of the top 16 teams on the continent and will be hard to crack as they redouble their efforts to better their lots of 2019.
Teams from Egypt, Tunisia, Benin, Uganda, Morocco, Algeria, Zambia, Madagascar, Burundi, Tanzania and Togo will be looking to challenge for a podium finish.
In the men’s category reigning African Games champions Madagascar will attempt to retain the gold medal by wading off challenges from 15 other nations including hosts Ghana.
The Madagascans will have strong contenders in Egypt who finished in second place at the 2019 Africa Games, while hoping that fast-rising Benin and Togo don’t pull the surprise button in the process.
Tunisia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Algeria, Kenya, Uganda, Morocco, Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Rwanda, Tanzania and Botswana are the other teams that cannot be taken for granted.
Bronze medalists at the 2019 edition Nigeria are not in this equation haven fallen out of the top 16 ranking on the continent.
At the 2022 FIBA 3X3 Africa Cup, Madagascar reigned supreme, defeating Egypt in the final 20-17 while Rwanda defeated Tunisia 21-17 for bronze.
DR Congo, Morocco, Botswana and Kenya followed in that order.
The 16 teams already knew the ability of each other and would use the Africa Games as another opportunity to craft their ways to the prized gold medal. -
Members of Nigeria’s senior men’s national basketball team DTigers have bemoaned the country’s disappointing finish in the first window of 2025 Afrobasket qualifying in Tunisia.
DTigers who arrived on game day after battling with paucity of funds lost 82-89 to the Libyan team, 62-72 to Uganda and 62-78 to Cape Verde to finish winless in the competition.
Analysing Nigeria’s performance in Tunisia, DTigers captain Mike Nuga implored authorities to take cognizance of lessons of the first window ahead of the second stanza in 2025.
“I think the lessons we can take away from the first window is just being more ready,” the Lagos born player said.
“I thinks we have a good group of guys.
“We had all the pieces to get wins but may be we could’ve been more prepared mentally.”
Despite the shoddy or no preparation the team endured, Nuga who finished as the competition’s 4th highest points scorer with 65 still believed that the players should also share in the blame for loss of concentration in crucial moments of their games.
“I feel like we could’ve paid more attention to smaller details especially rebounding and just gelling with each other, I think we could’ve done a lot better.”
In the lead up to the Afrobasket qualifying, basketball fans back in Nigeria and abroad became apprehensive after news filtered in that Tigers would not make the tournament because of Nigeria Basketball Federation’s inability to secure funds.
A dying minute intervention by the Sports Ministry ensured the team left on the eve of the competition to arrive on game day, leaving the coaching crew scrambling for ways of knocking together a decent squad, at least.
While speaking on Team Nigeria’s campaign in Tunisia, head of DTigers’ coaching crew Abdulrahman Mohammed underlined the fact that talent alone cannot always bail you out in the game of basketball.
“Gone are the days when Nigeria, because of the talent that we have, without preparation, we can just go and beat any other team,” Mohammed said.
“And let’s not forget that it’s a team sport. We need to have something called chemistry, you need to have something called understanding, both among the players, the coaching and everybody that’s part of the team.
“As a team, for you to actually assess yourself and said we did this when we were preparing and it didn’t go down well with us. But there wasn’t any practice session, our first practice session was our first match as a group.
“So you can imagine how difficult it was. Most of the mistakes we were making, we were making them during the games. So if we had some few practice sessions, may be we would able to make those few mistakes in practice and correct them going into the games.”
The Cape Verdeans recorded a perfect record of 3 wins to stay atop the standings.
Libya with 2 wins and 1 loss occupy 2nd spot while Uganda on 1 win and 2 losses stay 3rd, ahead of winless Nigeria in last position.
The Nigerian squad left yesterday and is expected to arrive today with the locally based personnel.
The basketball authorities now have ample opportunity to correct the wrongs that led to the shoddy performance in the first window as reverse fixtures of Afrobasket 2025 qualifying come up next year’s February.