Nigeria men’s basketball national team, D’Tigers’ former assistant coach, Abdulrahman Mohammed has expressed confidence in the ability of the squad to pull off shock results against Russia and Argentina at this year’s FIBA World Cup in China.
Although he admitted beating both top countries would be a herculean task for Alex Nwora’s team, sports247.ng can report that Abdulrahman is not leaving out the possibility of upsets.
He, however, stressed that D’Tigers must get better preparations this time out, than they had for the final window of the qualifiers, in which they went to Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire in a rush and ended up losing two matches, but had already qualified in the previous stage.
To avoid a repeat of the Abidjan debacle, Abdulrahman has now urged Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF) to pull out all stops in order to accord D’Tigers the best form of preparations ever.
Ahead of the global showpiece in China from August 31 to September 15, Abdulrahman stressed that only adequate preparations can help D’Tigers stand any chance against former champions Argentina, silver medalist Russia and former FIBA Asia Cup champions Korea in Group B.
Abdulrahman said: “Russia and Argentina are the toughest in that group, while the Koreans are no push overs.
“All we have to do is beat Korea and get an upset against Argentina or Russia and we will still be able to come out of the group.
“Preparation here is the key more importantly we are faced with these two tough countries.
“We need to start preparing early and get everyone that we can get and do all we need to do to get the big players.
“Preparation was nothing to write home about the last time we played in Cote d’Ivoire; which was why we had a terrible outing.”
