NBBF explains MFM, Air Warriors coaches’ presence in D’Tigress’ team to Serbia

The Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF) said it drafted coaches of Air Warriors of Abuja, Samson Sotuminu and MFM of Lagos Basketball Club, Aderemi Adewunmi to the technical crew of D’Tigress’ team to be exposed to the techniques of basketball.

Coaches Sotuminu and Adewunmi’s teams played in the finals of the 2019 Zenith Bank Women’s Basketball league recently and are expected to be part of D’Tigress 2020 Japan Olympics qualifier holding next month in Belgrade, Serbia.Speaking with The Guardian yesterday, NBBF Vice President, Babs Ogunade said the decision of the governing body was to include the domestic coaches to work with D’Tigress foreign coach, Hunghley Otis, to develop and encourage the coaches to give their best in order to improve the standard of basketball league in the country.

He stated that the experience gathered by the coaches in Serbia would go a long way to raising their technical expertise on the dunking game, which they would also use in training basketball players at the grassroots.

Ogunade noted that NBBF would deploy every means to ensure female basketball grow in Nigeria.“Drafting coaches that qualified their teams for the basketball league final to the senior national team for a particular championship has been in place since the present NBBF board took charge of the federation.

“MFM and Air Warriors coaches qualified their teams for the finals of 2019 Zenith Bank Women’s Basketball league after knocking out top female Basketball teams like First Bank and Dolphins in the semi finals of the Zenith Bank league. The two domestic coaches need to be assisted to further improve their knowledge on the game.”