Senegal National Basketball Team Point Guard Thierno Niang has opined a good base is needed for the West African nation to win the FIBA African Nations Basketball Championship (AfroBasket).
The 2021 AfroBasket is to run from August 24 to September 5 in Kigali, Rwanda with 16 nations competing; Tunisia is the defending champion.
Senegal missed out on winning the 2017 title and ended up in third place ahead of Morocco; the country last won the continental title in 1997.
The Dakar University Club Guard pointed out the lack of a structure and good base is the reason Senegal has missed out on a title in 24 years.
Speaking to FIBA, the 6 foot 1 inch Guard stated, “That’s our goal, we want to be African champions this year. If you take teams like Angola, Nigeria, Tunisia, they don’t have one group of players every year, they keep the same group of players, mostly eighty percent of the team.
“You can’t win a tournament like the African championship or do some good things at the [FIBA] World Cup if you keep changing the structure of the team. You need to have a base to win, you need to build a team.”
Senegal goes into the tournament as title favourites.
By Yaw Adjei-Mintah
@YawMintYM on Twitter
