Rwanda in Group B for FIBA WCup qualifiers first round

Rwanda men’s basketball team will play in the First Round tournament of the 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup Qualifiers next year in Bamako, Mali.

Saturday, December 02, 2017
Rwanda's Kenneth Gasana in action during this year' FIBA Afro-basket finals in Tunisia. Rwanda in Group B for FIBA WCup qualifiers first round. / File

Group A: Guinea, Tunisia, Cameroon and South Africa

Group B: Mali, Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda

Group C: Congo, Angola, Egypt and Morocco

Group D: Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, the Central African Republic and Mozambique

Rwanda men’s basketball team will play in the First Round tournament of the 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup Qualifiers next year in Bamako, Mali.

The Malian capital will host Group B that consists of Mali, Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda while in Group D, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, the Central African Republic and Mozambique will face-off in Maputo.

The two First Round tournaments set to run from February 23-25, 2018.

The top-three teams of each group will advance to the decisive 12-team round of the qualifiers, which will see national teams (in two groups of six) play home-and-away games over another three-window period and the top two teams from each group, plus the best loser, will then qualify for World Cup.

The seven other African teams that missed out on qualifying directly will then take part in a new 16-team competition called the FIBA-African to be played in the summer of 2019.

Games in Groups A and C took place last weekend in Yaoundé and Luanda respectively.

Tunisia, Cameroon, South Africa and Guinea qualified for the second round from Group A while Congo, Angola, Egypt and Morocco advanced from Group C.

Under FIBA’s new competition System, Africa will for the first time qualify five teams to the World Cup that will be hosted by China from 31st August – 15th September, 2019.

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