MADINAH, 11 April 2005 — Don’t look now but Morocco are easily one of the top favorites for the basketball gold medal in the Islamic Solidarity Games with crushing victories in their first two matches.
The Moroccans took the floor against Chad yesterday at the Al-Ansar Stadium here and walked off with a 79-60 victory.
Counting their 138-37 manhandling of Maldives Saturday, the Moroccans won by a combined unbelievable margin of 120 points.
The supremely confident Moroccan players told Arab News in an interview yesterday that they “did not come to Saudi Arabia for a visit but to go back home with the championship.”
Muhammad Hujaira, one of the players on the Moroccan team, praised the Kingdom for hosting this big sporting event where Muslims from all over the world gather in one place. He said: “Today we played with high spirits against Chad especially since we are in a city that we all love, Madinah. We are going to continue to win and will not stop until we reach the top and become champions of the basketball competition.” There could be some basis for Hujaira’s pronouncement for, after all, pundits have lumped Morocco with hosts Saudi Arabia and Arab champions Tunisia as the teams likely to win the title.
At the risk of being labeled overconfident if not cocky, Nabil Bakas proclaimed: “We are very confident with our ability to win any match we play. Today we all played very good and made great efforts to win the match. We train seriously because we did not come to Saudi Arabia for tourism, but we want to win and go back home as champions. Our team has a very good reputation in both the Arab and African level not only in basketball, but in all sports.”
Another standout for Morocco, Zakareya Musbahi, said: “This big tournament gives us the great opportunity to mix with other countries and gain experience. Most important is to meet with brother Muslims from all over the world. We were very excited about these Islamic games and our spirits are very high. At the end, I am sure that we will achieve good results.”
