BASKETBALL – Bahrain is gearing up to host the Gulf Men’s Basketball Championship 2024 early next month.
The tournament is scheduled to take place from September 2 to 7, with the senior squads of four GCC nations in the fray, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and hosts Bahrain.
Games will be played at Khalifa Sports City Arena in Isa Town.
The Bahrain Basketball Association (BBA) has stepped up their preparations for the event. A meeting was held by the tournament’s supreme organising committee, headed by Mohammed Al Ajmi, adviser to the Supreme Council for Youth and Sport chairman.
The opening stage of the competition will be held in a single round-robin, which will determine the seeding of the participating squads. That will then set the match-ups in the semi-finals, with the top seeds playing the fourth and the second seeds taking on the third.
The winners of those two games will march through to the gold medal contest.
The schedule of the first phase of the championship has yet to be announced by the BBA.
Bahrain’s senior men are currently training locally under the supervision of head coach Jad El Hajj from Lebanon. According to a BBA official, they are planning to hold an overseas training camp in Europe as part of their final preparations for the event.
El Hajj recently guided the nationals in the kingdom’s historic, first-ever participation in a Fiba Olympic Qualifying Tournament (OQT), held last month in Puerto Rico ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympics.
El Hajj is expected to have much of the same team that competed in their OQT for the Gulf championship. The squad list for their training programme or for the tournament proper has not been announced by the BBA.
Meanwhile, Bahrain’s cadets national team will be taking part in the U15 Gulf Basketball Association (GBA) Cup in Doha, Qatar, scheduled to begin on Thursday later this week and continue until Monday next week.
The Bahrainis are in Group B for the tournament’s preliminary round along with Oman and the host Qataris. Group A features Saudi, Kuwait, and the UAE.
Bahrain open their campaign against Oman on Thursday at 7pm. They then have a bye the following day before playing their next game against Qatar on Saturday, also at 7pm.
The top two from each division move on to the semi-finals on Sunday next week. That will then set the stage for the gold and bronze medal contests on the cup’s last day.
patrick@gdnmedia.bh
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