Angola, Senegal our biggest challenge, says Ewalefo

D’Tigress forward says only two countries can stop Nigeria’s senior basketball team. Vivian Ewalefo is wary of the threat posed by the duo of Angola and Senegal in the country’s chase for a FIBA World qualification ticket at the ongoing FIBA Africa Championships for Women holding in Antananarivo, Madagascar.

Only two teams will make the global basketball event next year in Czech Republic and Ewalefo admits the national women’s team will have to battle Senegal and Angola to pick one of the slots from the continent.

The Angola headache

Ewalefo said: “Angola and Senegal are probably our biggest challenge in this tournament. Senegal has dominated women basketball for long; they’ve won their last three matches and are almost unstoppable.

“Angola has also come out blazing this year; they have some very good veterans this time. They have always been very organised and they have good shooters, so we will have to be ready for a fight with them. But can we beat them? For sure, we can win this whole thing. We just have to come focussed and execute our game plan.”

The Nigeria-American forward believes the coaching crew led by Ebun Comets proprietor, Ayo Bakare, can inspire the team to World Championship qualification:

“We have a very talented team and Ayo is a great coach. We all believe in ourselves no matter what; our goal is to win the tournament.

Speaking on the difference between Senegal and Nigeria’s female basketball, she said, “I’m sure it’s just preparation; we always do everything last minute: bring a team together to train for a week or two and expect us to win everything.

“We should spend minimum one month in training and that’s not just practice that’s playing in other tournaments; we spent two weeks in camp. Mfon and I arrived in Lagos and two days later had those games with Ivory Coast; then we took an entire seven days off; then we resumed for about 11 days.

Out of sync

On the team’s loss to Mali in their opening match, Ewalefo revealed that the players were out of sync. She said: “The tournament has been going well after that first game. We blew out Rwanda and Tunisia by 30 and 20 points but we lost to Mali in a really ugly game; everybody was just out of sync. It was terribly low scoring; there were like seven-eight minutes stretches where there was no scoring from either side.”

Meanwhile, D’Tigress will be without the point guard, Mactabene Amachree, who reportedly dumped the team after a disagreement with the team’s head coach, Bakare.

Amachree, who plays professional basketball with MERSIN BSH BLD basketball team in the Turkish league, has since returned to Nigeria, leaving the Nigerian team with only 11 players.