Johannesburg — The Cape Town Tigers will be South Africa’s first representatives in the prestigious Basketball Africa League that tips off in Dakar, Senegal on March 5.
The Tigers were among the 12 participating teams that were announced on Tuesday to compete in the 2022 BAL — the edition of the tournament. In what was a somewhat circuitous and controversial journey into the competition, the Tigers, established in 2019, were handed a walkover when the team they were due to face in a play-off match, New Star of Burundi suffered a Covid outbreak in their squad. New Star did appeal to the International Basketball Federation (Fiba) in December, but that appeal was unsuccessful.
The 12 teams will be divided into two conferences — the Sahara Conference and the Nile Conference. Each conference will play a 15-game group phase during which each team will face the other five teams in its conference once.
The Sahara Conference’s group phase will take place at the Dakar Arena from March 5 to 15, and the Nile Conference’s group phase will take place at Hassan Mostafa Indoor Sports Complex in Cairo from April 9 to 19. The top four teams from each conference will qualify for the BAL Playoffs, which will feature a single-elimination tournament and Finals at Kigali Arena from May 21 to 28.
Champions from the national leagues in Angola, Egypt, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal and Tunisia earned their participation in the 2022 BAL season by winning their respective national leagues. The remaining six teams, which included the Tigers, are from Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Mozambique and South Sudan and secured their participation through qualifying tournaments conducted by FIBA from October to December 2021.
“We are thrilled to welcome seven new teams and four new countries into the second season of the BAL,” said BAL President Amadou Gallo Fall.
The BAL is a partnership between Fiba and the NBA, is a new professional league featuring 12 club teams from across Africa. The BAL, marks the NBA’s first collaboration to operate a league outside North America.
IOL Sport