Africa-Press – Rwanda. The Basketball Africa League (BAL) qualifiers round of 16 will start on December 2 in Johannesburg, South Africa. The 16 teams competing at this stage have been divided into four groups of four each with eight teams set to compete in the Western Division, as the other eight teams will battle it out in the Eastern Division.
The Western Division is made up of two groups: G1 and G2. G1 consists of F.A.P (Cameroon), A.S Police (Mali), S.O.A (Cote d’Ivoire) and ASPAC (Benin); while G2 is made up of Association Sportive Sale (Morocco), SLAC (Guinea), A.S Nigelec (Niger) and Espoir Fukashi (DR Congo).
The Eastern Division consists of two groups as well: Group H1 and H2. H1 consists of Cape Town Tigers (South Africa), New Stars (Burundi), Kurasini Heats (Tanzania) and Matero Magic (Zambia), while H2 is made up of Ferroviario da Beira (Mozambique), Ulinzi Warriors (Kenya), City Oilers (Uganda) and Cobra Sport (South Sudan).
The Cameroonian capital city of Yaounde will host the Western Division groups, while Johannesburg will be home to those of the Eastern Division. The games in Yaounde will run from December 11-16 while the Johannesburg showdown is scheduled for December 2-7 (subject to confirmation).
During the qualifiers, the four teams in each group will play against each other, and the teams that finish in the top-two places of each of the 4 groups will advance to the second round of the qualifiers where they will play semi-finals, finals and a third-place game.
The winners of the semi-finals and winners of the third-place game will qualify to the second edition of the BAL. The league champions of Angola, Egypt, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal and Tunisia qualified automatically to the final tournament, where they will be joined by 6 other teams that will have made it from the qualifiers. Rwanda Energy Group (REG) are the local league champions in Rwanda, and gained an automatic ticket to the BAL.
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