Paris Olympics : US out dunk hard fighting D’Tigress in quarter-final game

Nigeria’s D’Tigress Wednesday night lost to eight time Olympic and defending Champions USA 74-88 in the women’s basketball game decided at the Bercy Arena in Paris France.

Although the Americans took the 3rd quarter 15-24 but the Nigerian performance in the 4th quarter was fascinating as DTigers won that quarter 26-12.

Nigeria challenged greatly contesting every move but lost the first quarter 17-26. She was leading very well in the second quarter but the Americans who were taller and more physical played a more technical game to come from behind to take the second quarter, ensuring they end the first half at 52-33.

The Americans playing in Group C, defeated Japan 102-76; beat Belgium 87-74 before over running Germany 87-68 to qualify for the quarter- finals.

While Nigeria that qualified from Group B, stunned highly rated Australia 75-62; lost to France 54-75 and dusted Canada 79-70.l to progress to the last eight.

Nigeria ranked 12th in the world and No 1 in Africa has already made history as the first African team (male and female) to play at the Olympics quarter-finals. She has 3 appearances at Greece 2004 and Tokyo 2020 achieving the 11th position at each tournament.
Nigerian women have six titles at the AfroBasketball tournaments having won in 2003, 2005 and four consecutive times in 2017, 2019, 2021 and 2023.

The USA on the other hand, is the most successful country in Olympics Basketball as their men won 16 out of 19 Olympic tournaments and the women won 8 out of 10 tournaments with seven wins in a row from 1996 -2000.
Argentina has also won the title once as well as then Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

With this result, the US will on Friday meet Belgium in the semi-finals while France and Australia will slug it out in the second semi- final game on the same day.