Stevy
Last week
Groups confirmed
Group A: Qatar, Australia, Korea, Lebanon
Group B: Guam, Japan, Syria, Iran
Group C: China, Jordan, India, Saudi Arabia
Group D: Chinese Taipei, New Zealand, Iraq, Philippines
RobT
Last week
Pretty sure that Aust, Japan and NZ will go through in their groups and likely that 2 of these will qualify. Who gets Group C?
hoopie
Last week
China will find a way to not win the easiest group
Stevy
Last week
@RobT @Hoopie
China is in the middle of a massive rebuild since the Asian Games. They sacked Djordjevic and are fielding a much younger squad now. While they dominated Japan's C-team, they looked ordinary against Guam. My money’s on Jordan but China has a shot.
Perthworld
Last week
Oh wow, the China men's national basketball team - that will really get the juices flowing.
Luckily EuroBasket commences after this tournament.
ME
(he/kangaroo)
Last week
Despite my previous stance, these games shouldn't be completely useless. There's a lot of guys whove come through these tournaments and have gone on to be solid contributors for the Boomers - Nick Kay, Mitch Creek (for that one tournament) and Jack McVeigh spring to mind. I am sure there have been others. It would be a good chance to look at some absolute fringe guys (Toohey, Travers, Armstrong, Ducas, Henshal, Zikarsky, Olbrich, etc) and get the first tournament under the Dean Vickerman/Caporn coaching structure under their belt. Having said that winning any game by less than 25-30 on a bad day is probably an embarrassment.
Stevy
Last week
@Perthworld
At the end of the day, this is still a major tournament that greatly impacts rankings—which means better draws and future seeding. Let's be real: Asian teams generally struggle, and they haven’t made noise on the world stage since China’s Yao Ming era... and even then, they only reached the quarterfinals in the world stage. Still, I do appreciate FIBA merging Oceania into Asia—it forces competition and could actually speed up development. Maybe this year, we’ll finally see some more competitive games like the final against Lebanon.
@ME
Exactly. This tournament is perfect for new talent and building culture. Until Asia steps up, there’s zero reason to go full strength. 4-5 NBL vets + U25 D1/NBL guys should be enough—keeps games competitive for everyone while still developing the next wave.
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An Australian basketball forum covering NBL, WNBL, ABL, Juniors plus NBA, WNBA, NZ, Europe, etc | Forum time is: 12:10 pm, Thu 17 Apr 2025 | Posts: 968,026 | Last 7 days: 754
