RSA - Nigeria guaranteed a place in semi-finals

DURBAN (FIBA Africa U18 Championship) - Nigeria guaranteed themselves a place in Saturday's semi-finals of the FIBA Africa U18 Junior Basketball Championships with a comprehensive 92-54 victory over Ivory Coast in their final Pool B match at the Durban University of Technology yesterday (Tuesday).

But South Africa finally broke the hoodoo that has seen them never having won a game in an African Championship with a nerve-tingling 66-60 win over Mozambique that will secure them third place on the Pool A log.

The host nation led 34-31 at half-time and hung on to the end with some determined zonal defensive tactics that denied their more experienced opponents access to the shooting zone.

Coach Craig Daniels said: "The plan was to shut them down, but we allowed them to shoot so that we could feed off the rebounds and hit back at them with our fast breaks.

"It was a real game of attrition, we finally wore them out with some great plays from shooting guards Celemusa Khumalo and Sephelele Manqele and small forward Sakhile Sithole."

Nigeria, the defending champions, played themselves into their game against Ivory Coast gradually as their opponents tried to find a way to stem the flow of attacks on their basket only to find Solomon Alabi in unstoppable form as he piled in 23 personal points to bring his total for four games played to 63.

Nigeria had just too much fire power for the Ivorians, Orseer Ayodele (14), Nosa Omorogbe (13) and George Chiagwina (12) also scoring at will.

Kouao Quattara with 10 points was the Ivory Coast's best marksman but the side could muster only a 26.5% success with their shots at the ring to Nigeria's 47.5%.

Angola moved into second place on the Pool B log with a narrow four-point win over a spirited Guinea side that never gave up and had Angola on the rack during a frenetic final quarter only to squander a four-point lead and lose 51-47.

Angola must now beat Ivory Coast today (Wednesday, 5pm) in their last game to join Nigeria in the semis as the Pool B representatives while Guinea play Kenya (3pm).

Playing with only nine players with three still stranded at Luanda without travel documents, Angola were obviously feeling the strain of their physical encounter with Nigeria the previous evening when they were down to five men in the final quarter.

With the score at 46-45 in Guinea's favour and just over 60 seconds of playing time remaining, Guinea lost possession on their own base-line when their defender stepped on the line as he put the ball into play and Angola's' Francisco Luano scored from the turnover as Guinea's luck ran out.

South Africa found Mali too strong for them in Monday's late game, finally losing 60-43 to their bigger and stronger opponents.

Coach Craig Daniels said the players had taken a lot of mental as well as physical strain out of themselves and had gained a lot from the experience.

Once they had closed down Mali's small forward, Waly Coulibaly, who scored 22 points, 20 in the first half of the game alone, things improved for the South Africans with power forward Thembinkosi Sithole scoring 15 points.

Tommy Ballantyne