Prepared by Zoran Radovic (FIBA development director) in Geneva, 27”’ April 2010
Meetings held on various occasions:
The senior men’s team recently took part in the African Championship in Libya. Despite this being an opportunity for South Africa to go out there and create relationships with other African nations and see how we could learn from them, our national body Basketball South Africa (BSA) missed that opportunity with various blunders along the way… Then there was the Florida State University visit to our shores that went unnoticed, well almost but BSA didn’t cover itself in glory in that scenario either (No proper kit, lack of proper communication).
With BSA being in office for almost a year, there have been a lot of positive to come out of this new regime and other things that have remained the same or gotten worse. With everyone waiting to see what structures and plans that they would put in place to lift the sport from it’s smouldering ashes, I feel that they might have missed an opportunity to engage the various stake holders and get the help that they need.
Anyway I would like to focus on the men national teams that have had a rough time of late. If there is a positive to come out of the new regime, it is the amount of games that the various national teams have participated in. From the U16s competing in Zimbabwe with dignity to our ladies senior team qualifying outright for the African Championship later this year and the Men senior team going to represent the country in Libya.
That’s was quite the busy program for the teams but the thing that BSA didn’t look at is the finer details, it’s all good to say that we are taking part in competitions all over the world but if you don’t take care of how the teams will prepare leading up to such events or how they will get to those events and be treated then they might as well not enter and save everyone the headache involved. This is why I believe that instead of jumping onto all these tournaments, BSA would have been better served making sure that the various structures within the national setup are ready for international competition. I am sure that the players and coaches would have been ok to wait another year without competition if they knew that when it eventually came back it was going to be worth it. Continue reading »
Just before our national team went over to Libya to represent the nation at the African Championship 2009, I was listening to SAfm when to my surprise I heard that they would have an insert on Basketball which would touch on the upcoming NBA-Basketball without borders Africa and the sport in South Africa in general… I decided to track down that particular interview and share it with the basketball public…
Speaking on SAfm Sport Special on Sunday 2 August 2009, Dr Ralethe, who is one of the BSA vice president, touched on a few topics during his interview… Continue reading »
TRIPOLI (Afrobasket 2009) – Angola has captured tonight in the Africa Union Hall in Tripoli, Libya, its sixth consecutive title in a much contested game against Cote d’Ivoire (82 – 72).
It is the 10th overall title for the basketball crazy country from Southern Africa, and Angola will represent Africa as reigning champion at the FIBA World Championship for the third time in a row.
The “Elephants”, the nickname for the team from Cote d’Ivoire, gave the Angolans a tough battle. After finishing the first quarter with a 19-15 lead, both teams went to the locker room with tight 35-34 advantage for Cote d’Ivoire.
Angola took charge in the third quarter but was never really able to pull away. The lead changed a total of 16 times, and the score was tied no less than 6 times during the game.
Angola’s experience with a team that plays together in almost the same composition since 4 years made the difference.
Leading scorers for Angola were Carlos Morais with 21 points, whilst Joaquim Gomes and Olimpio Cipriano added 16 points each.
Pape Amagou led the way for Cote d’Ivoire with 18 points.
1. Composition of groups:
Group A: Libya, Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire and South Africa
Group B: Angola, Mozambique, Egypt and Mali
Group C: Cameroon, Senegal, Congo and Central africa
Group D: Cape Verde, Maroc, Rwanda and Tunisia
The groups A and B will play at Benghazi while the groups C and D will play in Tripoli.
Please find below the games schedule Continue reading »
The USSA team recently came back from Serbia where they didn’t fare really well, finishing last. We can be quick to point the blame on the coaches or players but I think that before we do that we should look at the planning that went into getting the team selected and ready to participate in this tournament. We don’t seem to learn from our mistakes and year in and year out we sent teams to international tournaments hoping that they will pull off miracles and win a game or two or even qualify in the case of qualifiers.
The young men and the coaches that went to represent South Africa at the World Student Games went there with the best intentions but with the wrong tools or not enough of them. It’s like going to play a basketball game and when you get there you realize that you didn’t bring any balls and the hoops are not available but there are two teams and all the officials are there. My point is that I feel that this team was set up to fail from the time they were selected at the USSA tournament at the University of Pretoria earlier in the year. The team didn’t have enough depth at the post position and if that says that we don’t have depth at our tertiary institutions then all I can say is that the game at senior level is as doomed as it is at junior level. As far as the coaches are concerned, I can guarantee that there is no coach that goes into a big tournament like this with the intention to lose or not do well, so before we criticize the coaches we should ask ourselves if they were given the right material to work with from the start… That my take on the World Student Games where South Africa came 25th out of 25 teams… Better planning from USSA next time might help the teams achieve better. Continue reading »
As you might remember from mybasketball.co.za, the SA team went to a four nations tournament involving Portugal, Angola and DRC held in Angola. They didn’t win any games there but they gained some valuable experience. The U16 Boys and Girls national teams went to Zimbabwe where they took part in the Zone 6 games, they did very well against some of our neighbours, I am still waiting for feedback from the powers that be regarding that. The Men’s senior team will be holding a camp starting next week and there are a few surprises in the players called up to attend. I will get you an official list as soon as possible. And coach Flosh is back from Europe and we hope to get feedback from him on his trip so that we can share it with our readers. By the way SA might actually get a Wildcard to the African Championship in Libya in August so they need to get ready for any eventuality…
Currently our USSA (university) men’s team is in Serbia where they will be taking part in the World Student games hosted by FISU in Belgrade and I believe that they had a friendly game against Greece on Tuesday 30 June, I will get the scores for you and try and keep you updated as far as the tournament goes.. Continue reading »
The first 4 days of the SA men national team trip for the qualifiers to the African Championship are covered as word documents that you can download and read. The last day amd last game is described in depth by Kimathi.
SA vs Mozambique (Game 2)
Day before the Final game
We went out to watch the Zimbabwe vs Mozambique game. It was pretty clear that this game was just a game played because they had to…I for one was hoping that Zim could spring a surprise so that we wouldn’t have to worry about Moz anymore because they would’ve have lost 2 games. The game was very boring as Zim played Zone almost the whole first half.Seeing that we wanted to scout the Moz plays etc, Zim were killing us cos there is no way that we were going to play zone AGAIN.
Eventually Zim played their Man Defense and by that time I was almost asleep, the only thing keeping me awake was the difficulty that Moz had with breaking the zone. Moz won the game but you could see that they were not happy and thus ADVANTAGE SA.
Mind Games Continue reading »
