Nigeria bound for AfroBasket 2015, bid for wild-cards revealed

LAGOS (AfroBasket 2015) - Nigeria became the 13th national team to qualify for AfroBasket 2015 following a 63-50 second-leg win in their tie with Burkina Faso on Wednesday at the Indoor Sports Hall in Lagos, Nigeria.

The D’Tigers, who beat the Burkinabe side 87-64 a couple of weeks ago in Ouagadougou, will appear in Africa’s most prestigious competition for the eleventh consecutive time.

The AfroBasket will take place in Tunisia 19-30 August.

As a result of the win over Burkina Faso, the Nigerians also secured qualification for this year's All-African Games in the Republic of Congo.

Despite finishing seventh at AfroBasket 2013 in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria are now considered among a number of frontrunners to battle for a place at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

Only the winner of AfroBasket secures direct qualification for the Olympics, while the second- and third-place teams will have a second opportunity by playing at the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament.

Two years ago, following their participation at the London Olympics, Nigeria started off their AfroBasket campaign with four straight wins over Mali, Congo, Cameroon and Central African Republic.

However, Nigeria were knocked out of contention for a FIBA Basketball World Cup place when they were stunned by Senegal in the Eight-Finals.

There continue to be hurdles for Nigeria to clear, which was evident in the comments made by head coach Sani Ahmed before the second leg against Burkina Faso.

Speaking to local newspaper “Punch”, Ahmed, who served as assistant to Ayodele Bakare at the London Olympics, said: "If basketball is properly funded, we will be able to insure players and you will see that they will be very committed. Some of the players are afraid.

"They don’t want to get injured and ruin their careers.

[If we] play some friendlies and get the players that we need, we can overtake Angola - Ahmed

"A lack of money and late preparations have been our problems. Sometimes we start preparation only two weeks to major tournaments, which is not good.

As for Burkina Faso, who tried to repeat their AfroBasket debut a couple of years ago, captain Moussa Ouattara said much improvement is needed before the young team can aspire to do bigger things.

"We lacked confidence at the start of the game," he said.

"The team is young and playing in this atmosphere, has allowed Nigeria to settle into the game.

"We are a young team and we need continuity to improve."

Losing by 13 point shows that we evolved from the first leg - Ouattara

Seven countries, meanwhile, including South Africa, Algeria, Central African Republic, Congo, Guinea, Rwanda and Senegal, have bid for three wild cards, which will be handed out by FIBA Africa.

List of teams qualified for the AfroBasket 2015: Angola, Tunisia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Cote d'Ivoire, Egypt, Gabon, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

FIBA