Basketball: NBBF to retain D’Tigress coach after historic Olympic run

The President of the Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF), Musa Kida, has said that D’Tigress Head Coach, Rena Wakama, will be retained after their historic outing at Paris Olympics.

Kida made this known in an interview with our reporter in Paris, France.

It was reported that in just over a year in charge, as the first female head coach of D’Tigress, Wakama won the AfroBasket in 2023.

She also secured their qualification for the Olympics in February.

The NBBF President said the journey to Paris 2024 started in 2017.

He said that he had informed followers of the game that D’Tigress would shock the world.

“They did the same thing in the FIBA World Cup in Spain in 2018, reaching the same feat; rolling from there was the Olympics in Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

“Our preparations for Tokyo were second to none; I don’t think our girls ever prepared to or be more prepared to play in any Olympics.

“Unfortunately, because of the resources that we didn’t have, even though preparations were top-notch, we didn’t perform as expected.

“Fast forward to the ripples that we had in 2021 and 2022 about inner frictions between the players and the allowances they didn’t get.

“So, there was a little fallout from there when the government decided to withdraw us from international women’s basketball events; we had to rebound on that, go back to the trenches to rebuild,” Kida said.

Nigeria’s historic run in the women’s basketball tournament at Paris 2024 has been underlined by defensive steel, as well as a sprinkling of inspiration from their young coach.

It was reported that the team became the first African side – male or female – to reach the quarter-finals of an Olympic game.

Recall that the girls registered a win on their Olympic debut in Athens in 2004 but had to wait 20 years for their second victory.

However, their triumphant return to AfroBasket in 2023 set up their recent renaissance.

“Wakama came in with new blood, and then we gave her all the support possible to build this new team with a few old people.

“We got through the qualifiers; first of all, we went to Kigali last year, and we won the Afro basketball for the fourth time consecutively; we went to Belgium in February to qualify for the Olympics.

“We went to Germany in July, and we had a robust strategic plan on what we wanted, after which we had three friendlies, one in Berlin, the other one in Serbia, and then against the Japanese team here in Paris,” he said.

He said the plans really prepared the team, adding that he would have loved that the girls had better preparations for an improved outing than the one they showed in Paris.