The Nigerian women’s basketball team D’Tigress have been eliminated from the Tokyo 2020 Olympics following a third defeat in the group stage to Japan.
Following two losses in the first two games against the US and France, Nigeria’s D’Tigress needed a win against the hosts, Japan but failed to pick up the much needed points to give themselves a shot at a place in the quarterfinals, losing 83-102.
D’Tigress started the game brightly and did the simple and basic things right all through the four quarters but we’re undone by the trey’s from the Japanese who completed over twenty of their attempted threes while Nigeria had to make do with the two-point buckets with each possession.
At half-time, the hosts had built a 13 point lead basically from shooting behind the arc thus accumulating an extra point with every possession they got.
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While Victoria Macaulay was the star player for D’Tigers getting the job done mostly in the paint Hayashi kept knocking down the threes for the hosts to continually pull away till the blast of the final whistle.
D’Tigress will now look to the FIBA women’s Afrobasket in Cameroon which takes place in September to defend the title they won two years ago in Kigali, Rwanda.
