D’Tigers drawn in Group C of 2021 Afrobasket
D’Tigers, Nigeria’s senior national male basketball team, have been drawn alongside Kenya, Mali and Cote d’Ivoire in Group C of the 2021 FIBA Afrobasket scheduled for Rwanda.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the tournament will hold between Aug. 24 and Sept. 5.
Nigeria who are the 2015 champions and are one of the title contenders should have no trouble advancing to the competition’s knockout stage.
Cote d’Ivoire are ranked 50, while Mali are 77th, even though Kenya who pulled off an upset against Angola to qualify after 28 years of wait can be a handful.
D’Tigers, who are Tokyo Olympics bound, will hope to go a step further than their 2017 achievement where they won the silver medal.
The team who lost to hosts Tunisia then have since evolved to become number one in Africa and number 22 in the world.
In 2019, they were the first country in the world to qualify for the FIBA World Cup.
In spite of narrowly missing out of the quarter-finals, D’Tigers were able to win their Olympics ticket as the highest-ranked team out of Africa at the tournament. (NAN)
