Kenya suffered an 88-70 defeat to Côte d’Ivoire in their first game of the FIBA AfroBasket 2021 on Wednesday night.
However, Morans’ 18-point loss at the Kigali Arena does not tell the whole story of the game that was close until the final five minutes of the fourth quarter.
The Kenya Morans, returning to the continental championship after two and half decades, competed well.
“It’s not the way we wanted to start the tournament,” Kenya’s head coach Liz Mills said after the game. “We played 35 minutes of great basketball and the last five minutes kind of let us down a bit but we are looking forward to our next games against Nigeria and Mali.
“We were very excited to be back [at AfroBasket] now the goal is for us to win our first game at this AfroBasket.”
Mills feels Côte d’Ivoire did not win the game but rather Kenya lost the game.
“I don’t think Côte d’Ivoire beat us, we beat ourselves. We were in it for 35 minutes, they are not a team I think is a lot better than us.”
The Morans return to action on Friday, August 27 against the 2015 champions Nigeria at 4:00 pm (EAT)
“It’s about tightening up our offense, being able to handle that pressure. They (Nigeria) will be the toughest team in our group so [it will be about] tightening up our offense, only allowing one shot defensively really locking down in that area and this will be a different game.”