KIGALI (Rwanda) – Egypt demolished Tanzania 83-25 on Thursday to reach the FIBA U16 Women's AfroBasket for the fifth time in a row.
Though they put up quite a fight in the opening minutes of the game, the Tanzanians did not come close to the Egyptians.
Although Tanzania tried to stay in contention (8–5), they fell behind 17–7 by the end of the first quarter.
Egypt maintained their momentum. In fact, they had a 30-point lead (42–12) by half-time. They did not back down, outscoring Tanzania 21–9 in the third quarter and 20–4 in the final one.
TURNING POINT: Egypt set the tone for the game with an early 7-0 scoring run, quashing any attempt by Tanzania to contend in what turned out to be a one-sided affair.
Rose Katamboy's three-pointer two minutes into the game reduced Tanzania's deficit to 7-3, but this was as close as the East Africans got to the dominant Egyptians, who never slowed down despite displaying complete dominance at both ends of the court.
HEROES: Three Egyptian players achieved double-digit scores, helping their team to victory.
Zeina Amin scored 13 points in just 15 minutes and 12 seconds on the court.
She finished just one rebound short of a double-double. Dana Abdala and Fatma Abdella contributed 10 points and 8 rebounds apiece.
STATS DON'T LIE: Egypt were undoubtedly the strongest team on the court during the opening quarter-final against Tanzania.
They outrebounded their opponents 72–50 and scored 50 points from inside the paint.
The Pharaohs capitalised on Tanzania’s turnovers perfectly, scoring 39 points from them, while their bench delivered a total of 40 points.
However, some figures may have left coach Mohamed Abdelrahman wondering. In their last group phase game against Morocco, which they went on to win, Egypt only made 12 out of 37 three-point shots. Against Tanzania, they made only 8 out of 44 shots, and 7 out of 17 free throws.
Nevertheless, some figures show that Egypt can work well as a team, with 24 assists.
BOTTOM LINE: Beating Tanzania by 58 points reaffirmed Egypt's intentions in the tournament, as this was their fifth consecutive appearance in the Last Four and eighth in the last nine FIBA U16 Women's AfroBasket editions.
However, there are still some issues that need to be addressed, such as the large number of missed shots.
If coach Abdelrahman wants his team to reach the finals, he will have to address these issues.
To achieve this, he will need to address the problems he has identified.
Led by Rose Katamboy, Tanzania never posed much of a threat to Egypt.
Katamboy led all players in scoring with 15 points and ended up scoring more than half of her team's total of 25. However, despite her impressive scoring, she was also rather sloppy, turning the ball over an astonishing 15 times.
WHAT THEY SAID: “We’re qualified for the Semis, and it will be something else. But I’ll be careful about this game because we played the day before. I also noticed that we were not doing good from behind the three-point line. This is something we’re going to work on.” - Egypt’s coach, Mohamed Abdulrahman.
"I feel that the entire team is ready for this experience. We're all ready, we're playing together. I think this one of the main reasons we keep winning. However, we need to work on more on our long-range shots." - Egyptian player Zeina Amin.
FIBA