D’Tigress ranked 16th in world, first in Africa

Nigeria women’s basketball team, D’Tigress are now ranked 16th in the world and first in Africa in the latest FIBA world ranking released on Friday.

The Nigerian ladies, who emerged champions at the 2019 AfroBasket Women’s Championship in Senegal, are the only African team in top 20 in the new ranking system of FIBA.

World champions and Olympic gold medalists the USA maintained their top-ranked spot as the best team in the world, Australia are in second place, Spain in third, Canada rank fourth while France are fifth in the world.

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The new ranking system, presented by Nike, is a lot better than the previous system, which was purely competition-based and only considered the final standings of tournaments.

But moving from a competition-based system to a game-based one, FIBA says the new ranking is based on results of games ranging from regional pre-qualifiers all the way to the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup Final, including the Olympics as well as FIBA Continental Cups.

D’Tigress will be playing at the Africa Pre-Qualifying Tournament for Tokyo 2020 taking place in Mozambique from November 14 to 17.

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