D’Tigers in the early hours of Wednesday morning suffered a heavy defeat to third ranked team in the world Australia, in their final friendly game ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Completesports.com reports.
Mike Brown’s side were blown away by a massive 39 points as the Aussies triumphed 108 -69.
It was a total domination from Australia who claimed the first quarter by 26 – 13 and took a 49 – 29 lead into half time.
And by the end of the third quarter the score stood at 84 – 46 in favour of Australia who will be making their 15th appearance at the Olympics.
D’Tigers will hope to avenge the defeat when they take on Australia in the group stage of the Olympics.
It would be recalled that the Nigerians defeated USA and Argentina in their other friendly fixtures.
Meanwhile, before the commencement of the game against Australia, the Nigerian team dorned warm up shirts with pictures of the late Sound Sultan.
Also, a moment of silence was held inside the arena in honour of the artist who passed away at the weekend.
By James Agberebi
11 Comments
That’s game of Life! You win Some, You lose some.
Well said Dr.Drey , you got it in you !!..I just went to sleep after the third quarter, these Aussie are something else, to think that DTigers will still meet them at the group stage of the olympic is quite scary !!!…well I think we have won the Afrobasket twice before now ?..I need to be corrected .Any way I wish our DTigers all the best at the Olympics , beating world No.1 and 4 will surely fetch us at least 15 position in the world ranking from our present standing.Again the performance of our boys will enable more Nigeria/American/NBA born players to play for Nigeria in future , that is worth celebrating too!!
Hehehehehe….3rd quarter…the lead was about 30 points by then. You are not a patriotic Nigerian…Lol. Australians are good….with a capital ‘G’. Realistically, lets just focus on winning Germany at least, then Italy. Then having seen how good Australia can be, lets work hard not to concede as much as 40 points difference when we meet them at the olympics, that will help our cause a whole lot. Definitely our rankings will improve now, same way the betting odds on D’Tigers have taken a drastic turnaround….these friendlies have taught the whole world that anybody wey do anyha with these Tigers go see anyha o. All eyes will be on them at Tokyo…and I quite agree with you, after now, more Foreign based/born will be ready to and willing to play for the ‘motherland’ as Gabe Nnamdi has chosen to call it. As for afrobasket, my brother na 1 we still get o…thanks to when we started attracting the our diaspora sons…otherwise our best finishes have been 2nd place, even though we have won the U18 afrobasket a record 7 times…yes as usual, U-tournaments naim we dey sabi win for obvious reasons
Well said @Dr Drey, but it may well be that D TIGER were playing the Australian team with a mindset of saving their best for when the competition starts proper. Anyway, they, D tiger have really made me so proud irrespective of the final outcome during the olympics. A big big congratulations to them all.
@glory… I see your reasoning. I think D’Tigers kind of let off their steam deliberately to allow the Aussies a false picture of being not up to strengths… I see those Nigeria Sensemen turning the furnace to full blast when real hostilities goes off in Japan… Let’s wait and see, but the Aussies are good… their ranking is no fluke!
We have a very good coach who knows what he’s doing. He might have brought out positives from the game against Australia. We will win them when we meet again in the Olympics. I’m sure of it.
… It’s been a great and spirited showing by D’Tigers. Australians are really big, it appears no one in their squad is actually less than 6f5″. More Nigerian Americans will be signing up in the future. Our Diasporans and sportsmen local & exports have been those doing the nation’s name proud for decades now… from our football guys/ladies to Athletes… the Mary Onyalis, Falilat Ogunkoyas, Chioma Ajunwas, Aruna Quadris, Segun Toriolas, boxers, UFC fighters and the list goes on… Personnel when merit is chosen has never been short with anything Nigeria… the problem has always been the toxic politics and greedy/insincere/self-serving politicians… May God help us! One Nigeria that is fair to all, upholds equality, rule of law and merit and above all religious tolerance for all is all true Nigerians ask for… how some people will be hell-bent on skewing these strong pillars to favour some while excluding others is just man’s wickedness to man… God will pull the rug off the feet of those who plot destruction and enslavement of their fellow brothers and Neighbours! If it pleases God… NIGERIA is not beyond repair and redemption… Amen!
Just what it is @ Jimmyball. Very sad we are failing to take advantage of Nigeria’s numerical strength in boosting our economy in all ramifications.Just imagine a case where we’ve got huge 60,000 capacity stadia in most of our states in a country like nigeria with die hard football fans. Imagine the huge revenue/job employment, a well run league will bring to the country. Very very sad that those in position power, are not seeing things this way.
my brother… the potentials are enormous as you clearly pointed above! The torrents of insecurity we see starting from th 2000s till date is just the direct consequence of a peacefull & friendly nation that has endured decades of rape, polarisation and abuse at the hands of its leaders till the downtrodden and haplessly misguided ones could not take it anymore… our leaders and their quackness is what has sunk us to an almost irredeemable low of lows… may God show his mercies and recaliberate that country top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top… Amen! No country will compare to a Nigeria of merit, fairness and equity!
Interesting excerpts from Mike Brown’s interview;
In addition to Alex Nwora (former head coach of D’Tigers), Brown has also overhauled Nigeria’s coaching staff, bringing in backroom experts from the NBA to help with his detail-focused approach. He explained: “There are player development coaches on the Golden State Warriors staff that will be helping me in preparation for the Olympics, as well as Darvin Ham, who’s associate head coach in the Milwaukee Bucks and Jordi Fernandez, who is the second assistant for the Denver Nuggets and James Laughlin, Golden State director of video operations. “So, we got a nice staff, including an analytics coach from the Detroit Pistons, so a lot of different NBA coaches from different staff will help us out.”
But NFF strips Rohr of his backroom staff and imposes an errand boy who cannot even write a detailed scouting report as assistant coach….LMAOooo….and they want to continue winning top 7 countries like before….LMAOOoo. I laugh in iKwale language.
Very important question…who is bankrolling this mike brown….. everything about this D’tigers don’t feel like the usual nigerian team