Nigeria basketball star, Chamberlain Oguchi, has blamed lack of focus for the three consecutive defeats the D’Tigers have suffered at the ongoing Rio Olympic Games.
The national male basketball team are struggling to get good results at the second successive Olympics.
They haven’t won since their first contest at the 2012 Games in London against Tunisia, although the AfroBasket 2015 winners have played well in their last two matches.
Argentina, with a No. 4 FIBA World Ranking, thumped Nigeria, 94-66, in their first game but the clashes were much closer in the next couple of outings against No. 3 Lithuania and Spain.
Will Voigt’s team lost 89-80 to Lithuania on Tuesday while on Thursday, Nigeria led Spain after three quarters before losing, 96-87.
And Oguchi, the AfroBasket 2015 MVP, who has reputation as a player that can get hot and shoot Nigeria to victory, isn’t pleased with these results.
“It’s a lack of focus,” Oguchi told FIBA on Saturday morning.
“We seem to be losing maybe one quarter throughout the whole game.
“We go through long stretches where we don’t execute and don’t play our defensive schemes.
“If we can play close attention to detail for long stretches, I think we’ll be okay.”
Oguchi displayed his wide range of shooting against World no 2, Spain, but his team still fell narrowly to the Europeans.
“It was a hard-fought match,” Oguchi added.
“Hats off to Spain, they’re an experienced team and they pulled it out. We had a couple of turnovers that cost us and they capitalized on them.”
The top four teams qualify for the quarter-finals and the D’Tigers could still sneak into the last eight with victory over Brazil and Croatia.
