African teams ready to compete for spots at 2023 Basketball World Cup
African teams ready for Basketball World Cup qualifiers
JOHANNESBURG, October 25 (ANA) – In exactly one month, 16 African teams will begin their campaigns to win one of the five tickets on offer to the 2023 Basketball World Cup.
The first round of Group A and C of the African Qualifiers will be played from November 26 to 28 at an African city still to be confirmed.
It will then resume in February 2022 with eight other teams from Group B and D aiming to grab one of the five slots for the showpiece event in Indonesia, Japan, Philippines.
If recent events in the African basketball landscape are anything to go by, then, the Basketball World Cup African Qualifiers will be anything but easy for the eternal favourite and highly-ranked teams Nigeria, Tunisia, Angola, Senegal and Ivory Coast, who represented the continent in the China 2019 showpiece.
By the time the Africa Qualifiers begin, it will be almost three months since Tunisia retained their AfroBasket (African Basketball Championship) title in Kigali, Rwanda.
However, the African Qualifiers bring a different flavour compared to the AfroBasket as the 16 teams will visit several African cities over the course of 15 months (November 2021, February 2022, July 2022, August 2022 and February 2023) to define the continent’s five representatives in Indonesia, Japan and Philippines.
As recently as three months ago, no one expected Uganda to stun Nigeria in the AfroBasket 2021.
The East Africans’ win – probably the most important in their basketball history – not only denied Nigeria a place in the quarterfinals, but it also entered the history books as Nigeria’s worst result in AfroBasket. Nigeria, the top team in Africa, finished 12th.
Meanwhile, Cape Verde had last featured in the Africa’s flagship tournament in 2015 and struggled to reach the AfroBasket 2021, pushed eleven-time African champions Angola to the limits to win 77-71 in overtime before finishing fourth in the Championship.
The last ticket for the China 2019 showpiece was only decided in the last window as Ivory Coast rose from the ashes with three straight wins – including an unexpected 72-46 demolition over Nigeria – to return to the World Cup for the first time since 2010.
For the first time in its history, the 32-nation Basketball World Cup will take place in three different countries, Indonesia, Japan and the Philippines. – African News Agency (ANA), Editing by Michael Sherman