Basketball Africa League (BAL) champions Al Ahly will participate in the 2023 FIBA Intercontinental Cup (ICC) that will take place in Singapore from September 21-24.
All nine games will take place inside the Singapore Indoor Stadium at Singapore Sports Hub.
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The African representatives will compete in Group A alongside Brazil’s Sesi Franca (BCLA champion) and NBA G League Ignite (NBA G League). Group B consists of China’s Zhejiang Golden Bulls (CBA), Bahrain’s Al Manama (WASL champion) and Germany’s Telekom Baskets Bonn (BCL champion).
The three teams in each group will compete in round-robin play over the first three days of the tournament, with the top team in each group advancing to the finals on September 24. Prior to the finals, the remaining four teams will play in the classification games.
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The Egyptian basketball powerhouse were crowned champions of the third season of the Basketball Africa League (BAL), after beating Senegal’s AS Douanes 80-65 in the final held at BK Arena, Kigali, Rwanda.
Al Ahly’s roster will be headlined by Ehab Amin, who averaged 12.7 points and 3.9 assists per game throughout the 2023 BAL season to help his team secure the championship.
The team will be coached by two-time BAL champion Agustin Julbe Bosch who won the championship in 2021 with Zamalek (Egypt) and in 2023 with Al Ahly.
Bosch currently holds the best win-loss record (13-1) of any coach in the history of the league. In his first BAL season, Bosch’s Zamalek finished 6-0, before leading Al Ahly to a 7-1 mark this season.
Former NBA Academy Africa prospects Babacar Sane (Senegal) and Thierry Serge Darlan (Central African Republic) of NBA G League Ignite will also participate in the FIBA ICC.
Sane and Darlan were part of the inaugural BAL Elevate program in 2022 and played for Senegal’s Dakar Université Club (DUC) and Angola’s Petro de Luanda, respectively.
This marks the third consecutive year that the reigning BAL champion participates in the FIBA ICC tournament, following Zamalek’s (Egypt) participation in 2021 and US Monastir (Tunisia) in 2022.