By Juliet Agoyi
Nigeria’s female basketball team, D’Tigress, have defeated Senegal to win the 2023 FIBA Women’s Afrobasket Championship for the fourth consecutive time.
The Rena Wakama- led ladies defeated the 11-time African champions 84-74 to claim their sixth championship at the BK Arena in Kigali, Rwanda on Saturday.
This means that D’Tigress will now compete for a spot at the women’s basketball event of the 2024 Olympics.
D’Tigress quickly established their dominance with a nine-point lead at the end of the first quarter.
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The Senegalese team kept a close range in the second quarter with a 24-21 margin for D’Tigress extending their lead to 12 going to the halftime break.
Senegal played with more urgency in the second half and were able to take the third quarter 26-19 reducing the deficit to five.
However, the fourth quarter was back and forth between the two best teams of the tournament as Senegal continued to close the gap but D’Tigress took it to win the game by 10 points.
Nigeria’s Amy Okonkwo who finished the final with 23 points, 10 rebounds, and 2 assists, was named the Most Valuable Player of the tournament.
The Lionesses have now lost to the D’Tigress in four Afrosbasket finals (2005, 2017, 2019, and 2023).
For newly appointed D’Tigress Head Coach, Rena Wakama, she became the first woman to lead a team to the Afrobasket title.
