Nigeria, coach drops Olumide Oyedeji

From allafrica.com
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There are very strong indications that national senior team's centre Olumide Oyedeji may have been cut from the team by coach Sam Vincent as The Tigers get set to fly to Japan for the 2006 FIBA World Championship.

The news filtered into Lagos Monday night via a telephone contact from the USA just as the crowd gathered to receive the Junior Tigers at the airport. There were indications that Sam Vincent and the former Seattle Sonics centre disagreed over the captainship of the team, which has moved from the longest serving member of the squad Tunji Awojobi to Ime Udoka of the New York Knicks.

Efforts by THISDAYSports to reach Oyedeji yesterday failed as calls to his base only got through the answering machine. But as part of the proof that the player may not be in Japan, new NBA Draft, Ejike Ugboaja has been quickly called into the team and the player who just secured his US visa was billed to fly out last night. Even though Ejike was in the original list for the first stage of camping, he was left out due to visa problems and may have now received an automatic shirt to fill the huge gap.

It was also not clear if the Nigerian Federation would override Vincent's decision as we gathered by the weekend that the matter was being addressed from Nigeria before the latest development.

"Let's see what happens in the next few days. The board has been contacted on the issue and it is being addressed," an official explained.