Nigeria’s senior basketball team, D’Tigers’ defeated their Argentine counterpart 96-92 in a the first of a two- legged friendly games played Monday at the Thomas and Mack centre in Las Vegas, United States.
The encounter was one of the warm-up matches for the team in preparation for the Rio Olympics in Brazil.
The first time both sides met during the Stankovic Cup in China, last month, a few weeks after Coach William Voigts assembled the team in Los Angeles, Argentina beat the African champions 71-49.
The high point of Monday’s victory was the return of D’Tigers big man, Ike Diogu, the team’s co-captain, who was denied action at last year’s Afrobasket in Tunisia due to injury, as he hit 18 points with seven rebounds to his sterling performance.
After trailing by three points in the first quarter at 24-27, the Diogu inspired team parading a rejuvenated Josh Akognon, who last appeared for the side in the 2009 Afrobasket, out-dunked the Argentines in the second quarter by five points, 50-45.
D’Tigers took 35 shots from beyond the arc against their opponents and hit 15 of them, with seven of the 11 players that played knocking down three-pointers.
On Wednesday, they will again play against Argentina, in the second game of the friendly at the same venue in Las Vegas.a
