Nigeria’s female basketball national team, D’Tigress’ assistant coach, Peter Ahmedu has promised that the players and crew will not underrate Mozambique in their first match of this month’s Olympic Games’ qualifying competition in Belgrade, Serbia, megasportsarena.com reports.
With USA and Serbia as their next opponents in the group, Ahmedu admits many Nigerians would see Mozambique as the whipping team D’Tiogress need not worry about, but the well-respected tactician insists that is not the case.
He stressed that they will not take for granted their opening opponents, despite having enjoyed a number of victories against the past, with the last coming in recent as back-to-back fixtures at the FIBA Africa Women’s Basketball Championship and Pre-OQT hosted by Mozambique.
Heading into Thursday’s 5pm clash, rather than wipe away the Mozambicans with a wave of the hand, Ahmedu stressed that Mozambique will pose a more difficult challenge than ever because they will not want to lose repeatedly against the same team, and they now know that the ticket to Tokyo 2020 is up for grabs for only two teams in the group, as USA are already through.
Ahmed stated: “Everybody look at Mozambique as a horse for us to ride on but I tell everybody that when you’re beating a team once, twice, three times it’s just like taking a horse to stream but you can’t force it to drink water.
“So, what I want Nigerians to know we shouldn’t look down on Mozambique. They have been in camp for over 4 weeks, they have been to Europe. They have acclimatized. They also know the importance of this Olympic qualifiers. So we are not going g to look down on them and I don’t want Nigerians to think that Mozambique is a walk over team.”
