Kida said that the NBBF will keep Wakama as the D’Tigress coach.

Kida said that the NBBF will keep Wakama as the D’Tigress coach.

Following their historic achievement at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, Musa Kida, President of the Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF), has affirmed that Rena Wakama will remain head coach of D’Tigress. In an interview conducted in Paris with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Kida commended Wakama, D’Tigress’s first female head coach, for her outstanding accomplishments. D’Tigress won the 2023 AfroBasket and qualified for the Olympics in February under Wakama’s direction. FIBA recognized Wakama’s accomplishments when she was voted the best coach at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. Kida emphasized that the globe was shocked by the start of the trip to Paris 2024 in 2017. He emphasized their comparable performance at the 2018 FIBA World Cup in Spain and gave credit to their excellent preparations.

Unfortunately, despite having excellent preparations, we didn’t execute as expected due to the lack of resources. “Go back to the repercussions we saw in 2021 and 2022 about the players’ internal conflicts and the allowances they were denied. “There was some repercussion when the government chose to remove us from international women’s basketball competitions; we had to recover and return to the trenches to rebuild,” Kida continued.

Due to internal conflicts and unpaid allowances, the Nigerian government temporarily removed the squad from international events in 2021 and 2022. But the team was rebuilt by the NBBF, and that’s what happened recently. At the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, D’Tigress created history by being the first African team—male or female—to advance to the quarterfinals of an Olympic basketball competition. Their success was fueled by Wakama’s inspirational coaching and a formidable defense. Kida praised Wakama’s novel strategy and the assistance she got in assembling a group of players that combined youthful energy with seasoned experience. The team’s preparation included wins in Kigali, their fourth AfroBasket championship, and a victorious qualifying run for the Belgian Olympics.

“Wakama brought fresh energy to the group, and we helped her create this new group with some experienced members,” Kida said. “We made it through the qualifying round. Last year, we traveled to Kigali and won the Afro basketball tournament four times in a row. In February, we traveled to Belgium in order to earn an Olympic spot. “We had three friendlies, one in Berlin, one in Serbia, and then against the Japanese team here in Paris. We had a strong strategic plan on what we wanted when we went to Germany in July,” he remarked. Kida was happy with the team’s performance but thought they could have performed better in Paris if they had been better prepared.

Read more on sportchannel.co.uk