The Nigerian basketball team kissed their Afrobasket tournament title ambitions goodbye after they lost to Uganda by 68 points to 80 in favour of the East African nation.
The disappointment was felt from the team down to the coaching staff and many others rooting for Nigeria after a poor performance in the Olympics. The expectations were quite high for the 2015 Champions but they failed to live up to expectations even after defeating both Mali and Kenya in their opening two matches. They lost to Ivory Coast in the final group stage of the competition which saw them lost the automatic quarter-final ticket and had to battle it out with Uganda who put the final nail on the coffin of their campaign.
Uganda had the match right from the very first quarter when they won double the points of Nigeria, 24 to 12 points. The second and third quarters were no better for Nigeria as they trailed to Uganda, 19 to 20 points and 18 to 23 points respectively. The final quarter would have felt like theirs if they took most of their chances but the East African nation held tight to preserve their precious lead and it ended in favour of Nigeria (19 to 13) but that was not enough to qualify.
The impressive performance was shown by Uzodinma Utomi who contributed 23 points and 3 rebounds with 2 assists in the last match. He also tops the rank of Nigerian players in the tournament in terms of average points per game with 16.8 while Benjamin Emelogu follows with 10.3 points per game.
