Nigeria closed its second qualifying window with a three-game sweep to finish the group phase 4-2 and advance to the second and final round of the 2027 FIBA World Cup African Qualifiers. The D’Tigers followed an 84-81 victory over Tunisia with an 80-79 comeback against Guinea and a 106-62 rout of Rwanda to complete the 3-0 stretch.
Nigeria will meet Cameroon, South Sudan, Cabo Verde, Tunisia and Guinea in the next phase, with those teams competing for places at the 2027 FIBA World Cup.
The turnaround came even though newly hired head coach David Fizdale was unable to serve officially during the window because his FIBA certification had not been completed. Longtime assistant David Vanterpool, who had the required certification, took over coaching duties on the bench while Fizdale directed the team from the stands.
Fizdale, who was hired in May by the NBBF, said the certification issue did not affect the team. “It had no bearing on the game whatsoever,” he said. “We didn’t even know until the jump ball that I wasn’t gonna be able to do it. We looked at each other, and I was like, ‘All right, you got it.’ The trust is already there, and we just played our butts off and left the excuses out the door.” Vanterpool said the unexpected change did not disrupt preparations: “He just said, ‘Okay, look, this is what we’re gonna do,’ and allowed me to step up and help these guys reach their goal. He was over there coaching his tail off as well.”
Fizdale credited resilience after limited preparation, travel delays and a roster assembled from around the world. “We came in, we basically had one practice,” he said after the opening game. “We had our flights kind of messed up getting in here. Guys came from all over the world on no sleep, and we literally had a practice and a walk-through.” He said he relied on the general manager and player recommendations while recruiting, naming veteran Stan Okoye as his first call and welcoming point guard Ike Iroegbu back to the national team for the first time in five years.
The coach said the team’s mental and physical toughness helped compensate for mistakes that came with limited time together. “It came down to collective toughness because we did a lot of things wrong,” he said. “We made a lot of mistakes, but our overall mental toughness, our physical toughness down the stretch… our guys stayed with it, kept digging, and we got the stops we needed and made the big shots we needed.”
