Rivers Hoopers finish third at 2024 BAL

Rivers Hoopers outscored Cape Town Tigers 80-57 on Friday at BK Arena in Kigali, Rwanda, to finish third in the BAL season 4.
 
The Nigerian champions led from the opening jump ball and went on to lead by as many as 28 points to close their 2024 BAL season with a 6-4 mark.
 
On the day that Rivers Hoopers' Ogoh Odaudu won the 2024 BAL Coach of the Year award, Kelvin Amayo and Devine Eke combined for 45 Rivers Hoopers points to end their season the same way they started, with another win.
 

Cape Town Tigers, who played without their two leading scorers Carter Diarra and Samkelo Cele because of injuries, concluded the 2024 BAL season with a 2-6 mark.
 
The South African champions looked nothing like the team that caused the biggest upset of the season by knocking out top-seeded FUS Rabat in the quarter-finals.
 
The Tigers’ 6 assists, 20 turnovers, and poor three-point shooting (5-for-32) made things difficult for Flosh Ngwenya’s men.
 
And making half of their free-throws (10-for-20) only made things difficult for the Tigers who chased their first BAL podium finish.
 
Dhieu Deng and Ngor Manyang, the only Cape Town Tigers players to score in double digits, finished with 17 and 14 points, respectively.
 

The win confirmed what Ogoh envisioned days before the start of the 2024 Sahara Conference when he said to the bal.nba.com that they were ready to make some noise, when asked about Rivers Hoopers’ 1-2 in the 2021.
 
“People will see a lot from the Rivers Hoopers this season that we are slowly getting there. People are going to notice Nigeria this time around. This thing about Nigeria just coming to participate, we didn’t want to do this this time around. We wanted to put together a team that would come here and compete and make some noise, that’s all we did.”