Although the women’s basketball team – DTigress – won the FIBA Afrobasket Women in August, the road to the 2020 Summer Olympics is still a long one. The ladies will have to play two qualifying tournaments for one of the available Olympic spots.
The first tournament – Africa Pre Qualifying Tournament – to be hosted by Mozambique from Thursday, November 14 to Sunday, November 17 will feature the top six teams from the recently concluded Women’s Afrobasket. The six teams have been grouped as follows;
Group A: Nigeria, Mozambique, DR Congo
Group B: Senegal, Mali, Angola
The teams will play in a round-robin format. The top two teams from each group will play semi-final games and the winners will represent Africa at the Women’s Olympic Qualifying Tournaments (WOQTS) in February. There will be no finals.
This is not peculiar to Nigeria. Except for the host country, Japan and 2019 World Cup winner, USA, all other teams must qualify for the Olympics through the WOQTs.
The WOQTs will feature a total of 16 teams – top 6 from EuroBasket Women 2019, 2 winners of the Africa Pre-Qualifying Tournament, 4 winners from the Americas Pre-Qualifying Tournaments, and 4 winners from the Asia/Oceania Pre-Qualifying Tournaments.
The 16 teams will be drawn into four groups and each group will play in each of the four WOQTs. The top three teams from each of the four groups will qualify for the 2020 Summer Olympics. Since Japan and the USA will play in the qualifying tournaments, the tournaments in which they play will each award only two additional spots.
The venues for the WOQTs and the date for the draws are yet to be announced.
Images - FIBA.basketball
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