No time to rest for World Cup-bound 3x3 team

Head coach Tony Ochieng says the national women’s 3x3 Under-23 team that, on the weekend, qualified for the FIBA World Cup, will hit the ground running in preparation for their debut in the global showpiece.

The Kenyan women defeated their Ugandan counterparts on a tie-breaking encounter played on Saturday at the Nyayo Handball Court 15-12 to secure the ticket to represent Africa (South) in the games set for Romania 5 to 9 in Romania.

“We are happy to have qualified for this and I laud the player’s mental strength in upsetting Uganda in the tight match for the ticket. Despite the victory, however, we have areas that need improving as we begin preparations for Romania.

We have to work on protecting our leads and in many occasions during the continental qualifiers we allowed Uganda to make comebacks and threaten our leads.

We also had some basic mistakes that resulted from the inability to move the ball as effectively as we should. Additionally, the players have to be clinical on the paint and bag those points to complement for the perimeter shooting prowess,” Ochieng offered.

The Kenyan team is comprised of skipper Barbra Achieng’, the towering Madina Okot, Alexandra Juma, the event's top scorer Jackline Kogo and Lavender Atieno.

The exciting, urban and innovative, 3x3 is inspired by several forms of streetball played worldwide and is considered the world’s number one urban team sport.

Steered by FIBA, games see two teams of three players face off on a basketball half-court.

It was played successfully for the first time in international competition at the 2010 Youth Olympic Games in Singapore and since then has benefited from the launch of a yearly city-based FIBA 3x3 World Tour and national-team FIBA 3x3 World & Continental Cups.