Tulane Women’s Basketball Assistant Prepares for Olympic Debut
The Nigerian women’s national basketball team will be led by Tulane assistant women’s basketball coach Rena Wakama when the D’Tigress play their Olympic opener on Monday.
Wakama was named the head coach of the team last year. Nigeria will play Australia in a pool play opener at 4 a.m. central time.
Successive games will be against Paris and Canada with all pool play games to be hosted by Lille, Pierre at Mauroy Stadium.
The contest with France is set for Aug. 1 at 10 a.m. central, while the game with Canada is set for Aug. 4 at 6:30 a.m. central.
The Nigerian team faces a tall order to get out of pool play. The team is ranked No. 12 in the FIBA power rankings. But Wakama has already done fine work since she took over last year.
Wakama took over as the Nigeria Women’s National basketball head coach in June and promptly became the first female coach to ever win the Women’s AfroBasketball title in August. Nigeria is the No. 1 ranked women’s team on the African continent and is making its second straight Olympic appearance. The team also played in the 2020 games in Tokyo.
Tulane hired Wakama in April. She followed new Green Wave head coach Ashley Langford, who was Wakama’s boss at Stony Brook. Last season with Langford leading the program Stony Brook went 28-5, advanced to the second round of the Women's Basketball Invitational Tournament and captured the Coastal Athletic Association regular season title with a 16-2 record.
Langford played basketball at Tulane before she moved into coaching.
Before Stony Brook, the Raleigh, N.C. native was an assistant at Manhattan College for six seasons, first as director of basketball operations and then as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator. In 2021-22 she assisted a Jaspers team that went 21-11, their best record in a decade.
Before Manhattan she was the assistant coach for the Carolina Flames AAU organization, the organization that she played for growing up.
She played college basketball at Western Carolina, where the guard made 121 starts over and received Second Team Southern Conference All-Tournament honors her senior year after averaging 10.4 points per game.
She’ll be part of a Tulane staff that will coach six returning players, including Kyren Whittington, Kierra Middleton, Jaylee Womack, Joy Madison-Key, Amira Mabry and Lily Ba. The program also secured six newcomers in Ana Baker, Dyllan Hanna, Victoria Keenan, Sherese Pittman, Sadie Shores, Kendall Sneed, Kianni Westbrook and Karma Wynn.
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