RIGA (Latvia) - Right after beating Brazil for a spot in the final of the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament 2024 in Riga, Cameroon playcaller Alfred Aboya didn't waste any time in praising his main man, Jeremiah Hill.
"I don't know if he brought me here, or if I brought him here," joked the Lions' head coach.
"It's just a delight to have somebody like Jeremiah on our team. I'm so happy about how he embraced his African heritage, he has really embraced our team.
"You couldn't ask for a better person and a better player," he added.
The 28-year-old guard was coming off a huge 22-point night against veteran guard Marcelinho Huertas in the control room, taking clutch shots down the line and dragging his team to the Semi-Finals.
"I love his leadership, on the court and off the court," continued Aboya.
"He's somebody I rely on heavily to win games and he showed that. He's a clutch player, and when the team needs him most, he will show up. And he did show up!"
It all started in Alexandria
At the beginning of 2023, Jeremiah Hill didn't know he would have the opportunity to represent the green-red-and-yellow national team on the International stage.
Finding Cameroonian heritage in his roots, he found himself available, getting a call to the FIBA Basketball World Cup African Qualifiers 2023 in Alexandria, Egypt.
There's nothing like this. Not for money, not for anything. An ability to represent an entire country... the best feeling in the world!
"It's a feeling you can't recreate," he explained.
"Almost instantly we got there and [I realized] I had an ability to represent an entire group of people. This is something better than any feeling I've ever had through any level of sports I've ever been able to accomplish.
"There's nothing like this. Not for money, not for anything. An ability to represent an entire country... the best feeling in the world," smiled Hill.
Not making it to Indonesia, Japan, or Manila for the most-anticipated event of the summer, Cameroon took its revenge by going 4-0 in the FIBA Olympic Pre-Qualifying Tournament 2023 in Lagos, Nigeria. It handed them a ticket to Riga for this year.
Keeping the vast majority of that core together, the Lions managed to overcome the odds so far in the Latvian capital and find themselves only two games away from a historic Olympic qualification.
"Since we've come together, our core has been special," insisted Hill.
"We've added pieces, and taken pieces away, but it has been natural since the meeting. It's genuinely just special, it's something you can't recreate. And here we are, making history."
But how has this team managed to create such a bond?
"It's really hard to put it into words," confessed the guard.
"It's almost like a home away from home. We don't get to see each other. All of us play everywhere throughout the world, but the second we see each other, it's like we never left. And it's something we've worked really hard to accomplish amongst each other, creating this environment."
Hill has been seen wearing number 68 (by co-incidence also Cameroon's position in the FIBA World Ranking Presented by Nike) on his back in Nigeria to honor his mother's birth year, having had number 98 for his brother and wife's birth year. But he wasn't able to change it again coming to Latvia.
"For some reason, 68 sticks on the stage. It's a weird one," he smiled.
The importance of head coach Alfred Aboya
Since his first-ever game repping Cameroon's jersey, he has felt head coach Alfred Aboya's trust on a daily basis. And, the respect is mutual between the two.
Hill revealed: "His famous quote is 'No matter how much I want to step on the court, when the game starts I can't cross the lines. It's only you guys out there. If you can't trust yourselves, how am I supposed to?' Ot's the biggest thing he's ever told us. No one can save us."
Most importantly, Hill underlines that he used to be a very valuable basketball player who grew up in UCLA alongside his Cameroonian best friend Luc Mbah a Moute.
"Some people forget he was really good, really good at basketball. And it's always a hard translation to turn from a player into a coach. A coach understands inside of the lines and pushes us inside of the lines. It's not the best Xs and Os coach in the world, but he's a player," he stressed.
"And it's something, through all the levels I've played, that it's a big disconnect between coaches and players. When there's somebody coaching for 20 years but has never played basketball at a high level, he's missing a step," the 28-year-old claimed.
Coach Aboya basically gave Hill the freedom to be both a player and his assistant coach on the floor for the Cameroonian national team, embodying his trust and confidence.
Hill said: "When you have somebody who trusts you as much as he blindly trusts me, you'll see me on the floor making subs, timeouts, play calls, or run over to him to say 'What do you think."
"It's because he watches through a different lens. He can't help but be a basketball player. It's something you can't teach, you can't change."
Another example stands in the aftermath of Cameroon's defeat to Montenegro.
Sitting down with Hill, Fabien Ateba and Roland L'Amour Nyama, Coach Ayoba asked them "What happened? What can we do?". This obviously translates into different dynamics within the coach-player relationship.
"Take the coach out of it, he's like a big brother to all of us. What do you see as a player, you figure it out, and [against Brazil] we were a different team: we came back to natural," claimed Hill.
Can Cameroon emulate South Sudan?
The Indomitable Lions are only two wins away from making it to their first-ever Olympic Games, even before qualifying for a FIBA Basketball World Cup.
That's what Cape Verde and South Sudan did last year, taking the global stage by storm with upcoming and hungry generations of new talents. Can Cameroon now do the same?
Well, Cameroon has high hopes for both Yves Missi and Ulrich Chomche, both selected at the 2024 NBA Draft. Before this summer, this had never happened in the country's history.
"We miss Ulrich [Chomche]. He was actually with us in Nigeria. Obviously nobody can be upset with his decision. I've talked to him well before and we all understood. But Ulrich is almost like a child to us, we have to nurture and grow him," said Hill as he opened up on the 2005-born star.
"But for AfroBasket... people better be scared. We're more excited than people understand," warned the guard in respect of next year's FIBA AfroBasket 2025 in Angola.
However, the present focus is the Olympic dream. "This team is special. I don't even know how we could put into words how angry we were after the Montenegro game. We showed the world we're capable of being in games like these," stated Hill.
The Cameroonian national team's spirit is the one pushing them. And it all stands in their nickname.
"We're Lions. It's two ways to go about being a Lion. There's some who travel alone, and some who travel in a pack. Lions that travel in a pack are scary.
"No animals in the entire world mess with Lions traveling in a pack. It's something we've done. When we play as a pack, we're scary. Against anyone and anything, we're tough to deal with.
"It's hard to beat us. It's something we've embraced, we've pushed when we bring new guys to understand, what we're trying to do," continued Hill.
"Being a Lion is different, because even in the animal kingdom they're scary by nature, but they're also docile. If you don't mess with them, they won't mess with you. But it's time to play basketball, they've messed with us.
"They think they're superior to us just by statistics, paper, who they have, who we have, or whatever."
Cameroon is here to show they won't be satisfied with a tight loss to Montenegro, or with a victory against Brazil.
"We're aggressive and we want to be the best in the world. We're not happy with 68. It's really frustrating, and we don't accept it", Hill concluded.
Latvia had better come prepared to host Hill's 'Lion Pack' in a tournament of the upsets. Yes, another Indomitable night just might be coming to Riga.
FIBA