Nigeria is the 2019 Winner of the Africa Women's Basketball Championship
Nigeria beat Senegal 60-55, ending the tournament with a definite bang.
The 2019 edition of the AfroBasket Women's Championship, hosted by the International Basketball Federation (FIBA), officially started last week and ended yesterday. The eight-day tournament, which saw 12 teams competing against one another, is the first qualifier for the 2020 Summer Olympics being held in Tokyo, Japan. Not only did Nigeria's national team, D'Tigress, emerge as the winners of this year's AfroBasket Women's Championship and go on to qualify for the Olympics, they also qualified for the 2022 Women's Basketball World Cup, Konbini reports.
Nigeria was definitely the team that everyone was looking to beat after they took home the championship back in 2017. D'Tigress put on a world-class performance and played five games without being defeated. In the finals, Nigeria went head-to-head with the host country Senegal, which has held the winning title a whopping 11 times to date. Admittedly, the game was incredibly close in the third quarter. However, in the end, D'Tigress were the team that had more heart and beat Senegal 60-55.
This is Nigeria's fourth time winning an AfroBasket title and makes them the first team to win the title back-to-back since Angola did the same back in 2011 and 2013.
Watch the highlights of the epic game below: