A leading squad member in Nigeria’s female national team, D’Tigress, Ezinne Kalu is taking stock over the side’s loss to United States of America and concluded that they gave the game the best they could, megasportsarena.com reports.
The African champions lost the game in the early hours of Tuesday 72-81, but Ezinne insists she and her colleagues gave a gallant performance against the world’s top team and believes they will resurge from errors committed in their opening Group B game,
Next up for Nigeria will be France, who lost 70-74 to Japan, and would equally seek redemption against D’Tigress on Friday, but Ezinne believes the Nigerian lasses will bounce back before they finish their group campaign against hosts Japan on Monday.
The 2019 Afrobasket most valuable player, who was D’Tigress’ top scorer with 16 points, opted to stay defiant, after the Nigerian side won two quarters but still lost overall to the Americans, who carried the day 72-81.
D’Tigress led at the end of the first quarter 20-17 but ended the second quarter with 15 points deficit at 12-27, following which Team USA continued their dominant display after the half-time break, in the third quarter, inspired by Las Vegas Aces’ Aja Wilson, leaving Kalu to admit her side suffered stage fright.
“We got our jitters out of the way as this is the first game and everyone came out a bit nervous, but I think we buckled down and played our game and played Nigeria basketball.
“I am really glad at how we competed today – with a team like USA you have to play perfectly to beat them and I think we came out and fought as hard as we could,” Kalu submitted.
