Deepwater banking on underdog status

The coach of First Deepwater Basketball team, Lateef Erinfolami, said he will be banking on their underdog status to spring surprises at the forthcoming Champions Cup for Women, starting this Friday in Benin Republic.

First Deepwater, which came second in the Zenith Basketball League, surpassed expectations when they emerged tops at the Champions Cup Women 2009, Group B (Zone III) Preliminaries, in Abidjan, Cote D'Ivoire, which ended on November 7, ahead of more established clubs like ABC and CSA Basketball Clubs of Cote D'Ivoire, and First Bank of Nigeria.

"We have never reached this stage before, so don't really know the other teams, but I know they are tough teams... I hope we can surprise them just like we did in the zonal qualifiers" said Erinfolami while accessing the chances of his team.

No targets

Asked to name his target for the team at the forth coming championship, Erinfolami declined, saying before they went for the qualifiers they never set any targets, yet came away as the top team. He also praised the resilience of his girls at the qualifiers, "The girls gave their best, playing against the Ivorian teams that had some of the girls in their national team that defeated our foreign based National Basketball team at the 2009 FIBA Women Africa Basketball Championship, and I hope they continue to play like that in Benin."

First Deepwater will be facing the title holders, Desportivo of Mozambique, who are gunning for their third consecutive continental trophy, and ten other teams, who will be divided into two groups on Thursday before the commencement of the championships proper on Friday.

Other teams that will be participating in the nine-day Championship are ABC and CSA (Côte d'ivoire), Deepwater and First Bank (Nigeria), Desportivo and Apolitechnica (Mozambique), Centre Mère and Radi (Democratic Republic of Congo), Interclube (Angola), KPA (Kenya), Sporting (Egypt) et Energy (Benin).

The Championship runs from 13th to 22nd of November 2009 in Cotonou, Benin.