BASKETBALL – Bahrain representatives Riffa are set to compete in the Almaty leg of the FIBA 3x3 World Tour today and tomorrow.
The Kazakhstan event is the sixth stop on this year’s world tour, with 12 teams representing cities from all over the world in the fray.
Riffa are fielding a formidable foursome of Caspar Augustijnen, Dennis Donkor, Jonas Foerts and Vic Van Oosterwyck.
They have been drawn in Pool D of the preliminary round alongside Partizan of Serbia and home side Almaty of Kazakhstan. The Bahraini outfit are scheduled to first face-off with the Serbians at 5.05pm and then take on the hosts at 6.55pm, Bahrain time.
Pool A features Ub Huishan NE of Serbia, Hangzhou of China and Zavkhan Sainscore of Mongolia; while Pool B is composed of Vienna of Austria, San Juan Church’s of Puerto Rico and Bishkek of Kyrgyzstan. Pool C includes Raudondvaris Hoptrans of Lithuania, Lausanne of Switzerland, and Atyrau of Kazakhstan.
At the end of a single round-robin, the top two from each pool move on to the quarter-finals, which will be held tomorrow. The semis and gold medal game will follow the same evening.
Riffa narrowly missed out on a place in the last eight in their previous outing on the FIBA 3x3 World Tour in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada last week.
They won their opening game of pool play 20-15 against the Barcelona Panthers, but then lost to Ulaanbaatar MMC Energy from Mongolia 15-21 in their next contest. They were thus unable to advance to the knockouts.
The FIBA 3x3 World Tour is the leading international street basketball series. It will hold an event in Bahrain later this year with the Manama Masters, scheduled for November 1-2.
&uuid=(email))