D’Tigress, Nigeria’s senior women basketball team, lose 62-87 to their French counterparts in their second preliminary round Group B fixture at the ongoing Tokyo Olympics.

Similarly, their male counterpart D’Tigers lost 92-99 to Germany in their second Group B match of the preliminary round of the basketball competition.

D’Tigers suffered a 67-84 defeat to the Boomers of Australia in their first Group B preliminary game of the Tokyo Olympics at the Saitama Arena.

The Nigerian basketball team came into the game in high spirits after earning historic victories over Team U.S. and Argentina recently in exhibition games.

Nigeria had, however, lost to Australia in their final exhibition game by a huge margin of 39 points (108-69) several days ago for a reality check for the team coming into the Olympics.

The game started with the D’Tigers looking the sharper of the two teams, racing to a 4-0 lead.

However, the resilient Australians came back at 4-4 for a ding-dong affair from then on. The Nigerians, led by Miami Heat point guard Gabe Vincent, were impressive, matching the Boomers for strength as they tied the game 23-23 at the end of the quarter.

The D’Tigers were off to a quick start yet again in the second quarter with a three-pointer to make it 26-23 and could have stretched their lead a little further.

But the young and inexperienced Nigerian team were guilty of not taking advantage of their too many turnovers, including poor transition and staying poor at the free-throw line.

(NAN)