Watching D’Tigress at the Olympics

There was a moment in the third quarter when Nigeria was leading by 16 points, but at the Pierre Mauroy Stadium in Lille, it didn’t seem like the audience really knew what they were looking at. Lille is close to the Belgian border, and thousands of Belgians were over for the previous game—a tie between Belgium and Japan that had ended in crushing defeat for Japan in a deficit of 30 points. Even though tickets for the two games were bundled together, by the time Nigeria and Canada took to the court for their match up, much of the crowd had dissipated, and many of those who remained looked on, somewhat detached, as the Nigerian women’s basketball team did something that had never been done before. Minute by minute and point by point, the team chipped away at the Canadian defence while keeping their own firm so that by the time the final buzzer rang, Nigeria’s women’s basketball team had become the first African team to make it to the quarterfinals of Olympic basketball.