Vice President of the Nigeria Basketball Federation, Babs Ogunade, is optimistic that D’Tigress will achieve their first win at the global sports event in the 2024 edition in Paris, The PUNCH reports.
Despite having lost two out of their three games at the FIBA Women’s Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Antwerp, Belgium last month, D’Tigress still secured a spot in the women’s basketball event at the 2024 Olympics.
After the draw on Tuesday at the Patrick Baumann House of Basketball in Mies, Switzerland, Rena Wakama’s team were placed in Group B alongside Australia, Canada and France.
D’Tigress, the African champions, are participating in the Olympics for the third time after qualifying for the Athens 2004 and Tokyo 2020 editions.
However, D’Tigress have never been victorious at the Olympics, and Ogunade hopes they will be able to change that, as they have at the World Cup.
“We have never won any Olympic game before and we want to start by doing that now,” he told The PUNCH.
“We’ve won at the World Cup beating Argentina, Turkey and Greece but we’ve not done the same with the Olympics and it is important we start with a win. I would love us to win every game but we must take it one step at a time.
“I spoke with the coach yesterday (Wednesday) on the need to prepare very well and also that we have to strengthen our team and bring in more players. We have a long list of players but we are trying to look at how many of them we can get.
“But our first goal is to secure a victory because we recognize the importance of performing well at the Olympics.”
Over the years, inadequate preparation and insufficient funds have hindered the country’s campaign at global tournaments, but Ogunade stated that the federation was addressing this issue.
“The ministry, federation and NOC are involved and all hands must be on deck,” he said on the team’s preparations.
