Lionesses exit Afrobasket stage with lessons

National women's basketball team, Kenya Lionesses, lost 72-50 to Mozambique in the pre-quarter playoffs qualifier to exit the Women's Afrobasket, having managed one win in three matches. 

The George Mayienga coached side was looking to qualify for the quarters to join Egypt and Cote d'Ivoire who had already qualified through the playoff. The final team to the quarters is the winner between Angola and Cape Verde. 

"It has been a good experience for both the players and the technical bench seeing as this is a fairly new team and a majority of us were making debuts in this competition. It was a learning experience and we leave with valuable lessons," said assistant coach Mike Opel. 

Opel's sentiments were echoed by the team's assistant captain Melissa Akinyi terming the outing a good learning experience. She was the top scorer for her team with 10 points, one better than Victoria Reynolds who had a low-scoring day on the court.

Mozambique's Ingvild Mucauro top scored for her side with 21 points as her team lead in all but one minute and 24 seconds of the match. The two sides were only tied twice, in the first quarter with Mozambique leading for the remaining 36.37 minutes. 

"We take the lessons not the loss. As a team, however, we need to play better defense. For instance in the Mozambique match we allowed Mucauro to run the scores. We should have realised early enough that she was their go-to scorer and played better defense on her. At an individual level, keep playing, keep pushing and keep fighting and grinding to the very end," said Melissa. 

Kenya started the match well, matching Mozambique play per play fir the first five minutes of the first quarter to trail by half a basket as the game clocked five minutes. 

The Mozambique side, however, engaged different gear, forcing Lionesses into easy basic mistakes as they ran the scores to head out for the first quarter break leading 24-12. Kenya's only basket in the second half of the first period was scored by Reynolds.

Kenya played for 11 points in the second quarter against Mozambique's 17 to trail by 18 points going into the halftime break. 

The East Africans played a better second half, scoring ten points while restricting Mozambique to 16 in the third quarter and 17 in the final period against the opponent's15 but the fourth quarter's surge was too little too late to change their tidings.