FIBA World Cup Qualifiers: D’Tigers Advance To Second Round After Mali No-Show

Nigeria’s senior men’s national basketball team, D’Tigers have advanced to the second round of the FIBA African World Cup qualifiers with a game to spare after walking over Mali.

Despite losing their first game of the third window of the qualifiers to Cape Verde, D’Tigers are through to the final qualification phase after Mali failed to turn up for their second group A game, thereby forfeiting the points to Nigeria. Under FIBA rules, the Malians have now been disqualified after forfeiting for the second time.

As a result, Nigeria advanced with three wins from five games over their windows of qualifiers before taking on Uganda in their last group A game on July 3 at the BK arena in Kigali.

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Based on FIBA’s qualification guidelines, the top three teams from each group will advance to the 12-team Second Round. Here, they will join three other countries to create two six-team groups.  All teams will carry over their results from the First Round.

For Nigeria, they will face the top three from group c featuring Cote d’Ivoire, Angola, Guinea, and the Central African Republic.

In the Second Round, each team will play each new team in their group during two tournaments played over two event windows scheduled in August 2022 and February 2023.

At the end of these additional six games per team, the two top teams in each group, along with the best third-placed side will qualify for the 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup in the Philippines, Japan and Indonesia.