Nigeria and Mali through to women’s Basketball World Cup qualifiers

By ANA Sports On Sep 28, 2021

Nigeria and Mali through to women’s basketball WC qualifiers

a basketball player dribbles the ball — File pic. South Africa- Cape Town – 04 -May- 2021 Vincent Ntunja from Gugulethu a former South African national basketball player a model and radio presenter founder of Run/Walk Gugs and director of African Grassroot Hoops, an initiative that uses basketball to connect with underprivileged children. Photographer Ayanda Ndamane/African News Agency(ANA)

JOHANNESBURG, September 28 (ANA) – Though Mali missed out on title honours, losing 70-59 in the final of the Women’s African Basketball Championship over the weekend, both teams earned the right to compete in Basketball World Cup qualifiers.

Both Nigeria and Mali will be headed to one of the Women’s World Cup 2022 qualifying tournaments, which will be staged in February.

Those qualifying tournaments will be loaded with top class teams, including World Cup hosts Australia and Olympic champions USA, although each already has a spot in the tournament sewn up.

If the Opals and the Americans finish among the top three teams in their respective qualifying tournaments, then only two other teams will earn a trip to the event in Sydney.

The top four teams from the Women’s AmeriCup (USA, Puerto Rico, Brazil and Canada), the top six teams from the FIBA Women’s EuroBasket (Serbia, France, Belgium, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Russia) and the top four teams from the Women’s Asia Cup, which tipped of Monday, will fill up the spots at the four four-team Women’s World Cup Qualifying Tournaments.

Nigeria has already proved it can not only survive but thrive in qualifying tournaments, something they did in the Olympic Qualifying Tournament (OQT) in Belgrade to claim a spot in this summer’s Tokyo Games.

The Nigerians were a competitive team at the Women’s Basketball World Cup 2018 in Tenerife, where they made history as the first team from Africa to advance from the Group Phase and earn qualification for a quarterfinal game.They will expect to have many of the players from the team that played in Tenerife, Tokyo and this past week in Cameroon.

Mali were 41st in the women’s basketball world rankings, before the Women’s AfricaBasket and though they could rise, the African nation will be among underdogs to clinch a spot in the 12-team World Cup, which tips off in just under a year, on September 22 in Sydney. – African News Agency (ANA), Editing by Michael Sherman