Egypt were in tears after they lost their Classification Game to the Quarter-Finals to Senegal 60-71, but though still shaken about the loss, Raneem Elgedawy is already focusing on the 2025 FIBA Women’s AfroBasket.
In a do-or-die Classification Round game, Egypt put up a big effort to resist Senegal in the first three quarters, but the North Africans simply lost their sense of attack in the final stretch.
The Egyptians scored only 8 points and watched in desperation as the Western Africans plummeted them down with a 20-point showdown.
Elgedawy, a 1.86m (6ft1in) center does not have the answer to the defeat.
“I don’t know what happened at that point. We stopped playing in defense, we stopped fighting hard, we stopped playing together. Maybe we got tired,” said Elgedawy to FIBA.basketball.
She goes even further by saying that this game is to be forgotten. “Maybe we don’t deserve to win because we didn’t play hard, we didn’t play together. The coach gave us instructions and we didn’t follow them.”
Even though they are out of the title race, Egypt still have a chance to redeem themselves by trying to reach the best ranking they can. “We didn’t come to play Classification Games. We were aiming for a spot in the Final Four and we simply missed it. Now, we’re going to learn from our mistakes and play hard for every coming game to try and finish with the best possible ranking.”
Elgedawy averaged 15.7 points and 10.3 rebounds per game. It is not a feat she derives any pride from. It could have been a personal satisfaction if it had helped the Egyptians
