Nigerian national women’s basketball team, D’Tigress, has defeated Lionesses of Senegal, to win the 2023 FIBA Women’s Afrobasket Championship for the fourth consecutive time.
The Coach Rena Wakama led the team, defeated the 11-time African champions, 84-74 to claim their sixth championship at the BK Arena in Kigali, Rwanda on Saturday, 5th August, 2023.
At the start of the game, D’Tigress quickly established their dominance with a nine-point lead at the end of the first quarter.
The Senegalese strived hard, yet D’Tigress led with a 24-21 margin in the second quarter, extending their lead to 12 points, before going to the halftime break.
The Lionesses played with more urgency and were able to take the third quarter 26-19 reducing the deficit to five.
The fourth quarter was back and forth between the two best teams of the tournament, as Lionesses continued to close the gap, but D’Tigress took it to win the game by 10 points.
The Lionesses have now lost to the D’Tigress in four Afrobasket finals.
The first time D’Tigress won the championship was in 2017, after going for 12 years with no any title.
The team then followed up with victories in 2019, 2021, and now 2023 sequentially.
Story: Ezekiel Kefas