Nigeria Content Online

Nigeria’s U-18 male
basketball team, the Junior Tigers, will on Friday start its quest for
a ticket to next year’s World Youth Championships coming up in Latvia
from June 30 to July 10, 2011.

The Nigerian team
is one of the twelve African teams competing at the 17th Afrobasket
competition, which begins tomorrow in Rwanda and runs through October
17.

The championships,
which is also serving as a qualifying event for the world tourney also
has Algeria, Tunisia, Ivory Coast, Mali, Angola, Zimbabwe, Gabon, Congo
Brazzaville, hosts Rwanda and defending champions, Egypt all competing
for the two tickets allocated to the continent.

The nine-day tournament will be jointly staged at Amahoro Indoor stadium and Green Hills academy.

La Palisse
Nyandungu hotel will host six teams, five teams will stay in Lemigo
hotel, while the home team is already settled in at Belvedere village.

Before leaving for
the event yesterday for the tourney, the players alongside the team
handlers said they were ready to make the country proud in Rwanda and
also to secure one of the available ticket.

Emmanuel Odah and
Ogoh Daudu are in charge of the Nigerian team, which had twelve players
making the trip. The draws for the competition will take place later
today with the twelve countries on parade expected to be split into two
groups.

Earlier in the year, The Nigeria female U-19 team secured a ticket
to represent the continent at the World championships in Chile next
year after finishing second in the Afrobasket championship for the
females held in Cairo, Egypt.