D’Tigers head coach, Abdul Rahman Muhammad, has admitted that D’Tigers lost to a better Senegalese in their Wednesday’s quarter-final showdown at the 2025 FIBA Men’s Afrobasket Championships in Angola.

In his post-game analyses, Muhammad acknowledged that his side was outclassed in almost every department and fell short of their usual standards.

“They (Senegal) were better. The better team won,” he said. “I think they deserved to win. We didn’t just play well enough to win. We didn’t play our style. A lot of things went wrong, but I’m not going to take away credit from Senegal. They played better in the game of basketball.”

Muhammad highlighted Senegal’s superior adjustments during the course of the game as the key difference. “The team that makes better adjustments during the game is the team that’s going to win. After that timeout, they simply adjusted better. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not happy we lost, but I’m still proud of how we played,” he added.

Despite the setback, the coach maintained optimism about Nigeria’s progress going forward: “Now we’ve been able to know our identity as a team. We fell short, but this is part of the process. We understand what we need to do going forward to build a culture that will help us play better.”

Muhammad also pointed out that this was Nigeria’s first defeat in six games at this level and the first time they had lost by a double-digit margin.

“It rattled us a bit, but like I said, I’m proud of how we played. We’re going to get better, we know our identity now, and we’ll move on from here,” he concluded.