D’Tigers Head Coach Alex Nwora says the absence of home based players in the roster during the last FIBA World Cup qualifying window was for tactical reasons and not because they were not good enough.
The federation has received lots of condemnation from a large section of basketball lovers in Nigeria for fielding an entirely foreign based pros and college players at the expense of the home grown players which was one of the promises the board made before taking office in 2017.
But head coach of the team Nwora explained to sports247.ng that there was little time to bring the home based players up to the competitive level required for the qualifiers as most of them had played very little basketball in the build up to the qualifiers. Nigeria picked up Africa’s first qualification ticket for the 2019 FIBA World Cup which holds in China.
He said. “The home based lads are good but the league has been off for a while and the tempo of the qualifiers was really high and our aim was to qualify for the 2019 World Cup in China. We had to call up some of our most talented and experienced players to do that and we achieved what we wanted. The decision was purely on a tactical point of view.”
Nigeria became the first country in Africa to qualify for the FIBA Men’s World Cup in china coming up between Saturday August 31st to Sunday September 15, 2019 and were unbeaten throughout the various phases of the qualification series.
