On Saturday will be decided what the groups will be for the Eurobasket 2009 qualifying phase. Eight teams already have their tickets, the first seven teams of Eurobasket 2007 and the organizing Poland.
So before the draw will start, there has been a division into different groups. And these groups are based also on the last Eurobasket. So here they are
1. FRANCE
2. ITALY
3. PORTUGAL
4. ISRAEL
5.TURKEY
6. LATVIA
7. SERBIA
8. CZECH REPUBLIC
9. FYROM
10. BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA
11. UKRAINE
12. BULGARIA
13. ESTONIA
14. BELGIUM
15. HUNGARY
16. FINLAND
17. GREAT BRITAIN
So as you can see, Serbia and Turkey are only in the second group. So imagine you can have one really tough situation with Italy, Serbia, Ukraine and Estonia in one qualifying group. Knowing that only the winners and the three best second placed teams will qualify, this can become a very tough situation for some teams.
The draw will start on Saturday at 11 a.m. CET and there will probably be a Livecast on Fibaeurope.com
How the f**k is Portugal ahead of Turkey and Serbia?
very easy
PORTUGAL 9th Place in EuroBasket 2007
TURKEY 11th Place in EuroBasket 2007
I’m eager to see Great Britain if they can pull all their talents together.
Ben Gordon should be getting his passport, same with Kelenna Azubuike and maybe Michael Olowokandi comes back too….don’t forget about Luol Deng, Andrew Betts, Joel Freeland , Nick George and Pops Mensah-Bonsu , that could be a huge team if they get all of them.
@Kris
that’s a lot of if’s and also, who would be the coach to bring all those talents together and form a team within a few weeks?
Group A
Italy, Serbia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Finland
Group B
Portugal, Latvia, FYROM, Estonia
Group C
France, Turquie, Ukraine, Belgium
Group D
Israel, Czech Republic, Bosnia, Great Britain
Here is the official way how the best second placed team will be decided
The best second place teams are not decided by number of points they are decided by win-loss percentage. In the case of two teams having the same W/L % then the tiebreaker is goal average which is points scored divided by points allowed.