The 2024 Basketball Africa League (BAL) champion, Petro de Luanda (Angola) will participate in the 2024 FIBA Intercontinental Cup at the Singapore Indoor Stadium in Singapore from Sept. 12-15, 2024.
Petro de Luanda will compete in Group A alongside Europe’s Basketball Champions League (BCL) winner Unicaja from Spain and BCL Asia winner Al Riyadi from Lebanon. Group B will feature BCL Americas winner Quimsa from Argentina, NBA G League United ), a U.S. team comprised of select G League prospects and stars, and Australia’s National Basketball League (NBL) champion Tasmania JackJumpers. The tournament marks the first time a BCL Asia champion and a team from Oceania are represented.
The three teams in each group will compete in round-robin play over the first three days of the tournament, with the top team in each group advancing to the final on Sept. 15. Prior to the final game, the remaining four teams will play in the classification games.
Petro de Luanda earned a spot in the 34th edition of the tournament after defeating Libya’s Al Ahly Ly 107-94 to win the 2024 BAL Championship, which took place at BK Arena in Kigali, Rwanda, and reached fans in 214 countries and territories in 17 languages. Petro de Luanda, the 2022 BAL runner-up and one of two teams to have participated in all four BAL seasons, is the first sub-Saharan African team to win the BAL Finals after previous champions from Egypt and Tunisia.
Seven players who were part of the 2024 BAL championship-winning team will be playing at this year’s FIBA Intercontinental Cup. In addition, 2024 BAL All-Defensive Team member and two-time BAL champion with Zamalek (2021) and US Monastir (2022) Souleyman Diabate recently joined the team from Libya’s Al Ahly Ly and Egyptian center Patrick Gardner joined from Egypt’s Al Ahly. Gardner played with the NBA G League’s Long Island Nets, a team he helped to reach the 2024 NBA G League Eastern Conference Semifinals. Born in the U.S. to an Egyptian mother and an American father, Gardner made his debut for the Egyptian National Team at the 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup.
Petro de Luanda went 5-2 during the Kalahari Conference group phase in Pretoria, South Africa, and the Playoffs, defeating Senegal’s AS Douanes and South Africa’s Cape Town Tigers in the quarterfinals and semifinals, respectively, to advance to the Finals.
This marks the fourth consecutive year that a reigning BAL champion will participate in the FIBA Intercontinental Cup, following Zamalek (Egypt) in 2021, US Monastir (Tunisia) in 2022, and Al Ahly (Egypt) in 2023.
Petro de Luanda will play its first game on Thursday, Sept. 12, at 8:00 p.m. (GMT +8:00) against Unicaja. Their second game will take place on Saturday, Sept. 14, at 4:00 p.m. (GMT +8:00), where they will face Al Riyadi.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Basketball Africa League (BAL).
Copyright: Fresh Angle International (www.freshangleng.com)
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