Nigeria’s women under 18 handball team have now been defeated in their opening two matches after they suffered a 26-9 loss to Montenegro on Thursday at the IHF Women’s Under 18 Handball World Championship in Chuzhou, China.
Unlike their match the previous day wherein they had more shots than their opponent which they didn’t utilize, Nigeria had low shot ratio and it reflected as they could only score 6 goals while Montenegro, on the back of their defensive performance, scored 13 goals in the second half.
The second half was a lot worse as the Coach Shittu Adewunmi Agboola’s girls could only score just three goals in the second half while their European opponent scored 13 goals to win 26-9.
Coach Shittu said he is proud of the Girls despite what many might term an embarrassing result.
“I know these results aren’t what we expected while preparing for this competition but i must say that i am proud of the Girls for their resilience. We will now prepare for the next match and give it our all” Coach Shittu concluded
Left Back Taiwo Babatunde also acknowledged that inexperienced cost them dearly but they are grateful for the opportunity to represent the country in a global championship; something that was impossible some years ago.
“We are not that experienced, but we have been quite good in the African championship last year, and we are trying to give our best every time .
We are trying to learn as much as we can here, to become even better. Last year, we were in our continental competition, now we are at the World Championship and we are aiming to become even better,” Taiwo, whose twin sister is the team’s goalkeeper, told IHF Media after the match.
Nigeria will play Angola in their last group match of the competition on Saturday at 3am WAT. Angola had lost to Croatia 30-14.
So far, Nigeria has scored only 20 goals in the first two matches, while Montenegro and Croatia have both conceded 25 goals after two matches in Group B.
