Nigeria has been drawn against Uganda, Rwanda and Mali in Group B of the Africa qualifiers for the 2019 FIBA World Cup in China.
D’Tigers will be bid to reach the 2019 FIBA World Cup as one of five African Countries from a pool of 16 teams housed in four groups.
🌍 Here are the groups for the African Region! #FIBAWC Qualifiers pic.twitter.com/Ee1HDnmU8W
— FIBA 🏀 World Cup (@FIBAWC) May 7, 2017
Nigeria has only previously qualified for two editions of the World Cup Event in 1998 and 2006.
As Champions of the continent in 2015, Nigeria was among four countries seeded for the draw in Guangzhou, along side Tunisia, Angola and Senegal.
The qualifiers will hold from November 2017 to February 2019.
Qualifiers will hold from November 2017 to February 2019 #FIBAWC
— Basketball Nigeria (@BballNaija) May 7, 2017
The qualification procedure will go thus:
The continental championships will no longer belong to the qualification system for the World Cup. Instead, two rounds of continental qualifying tournaments will be held over two years in a home-and-away format.
The first round of the qualifiers will be held in late 2017 and early 2018.
The Americas, Asia / Oceania and Africa qualifiers will feature 16 teams each, whereas Europe will have 32 teams.
Division A teams will be split in groups of four, to be held in a home-and-away round-robin.
The top three teams in each groups will advance to round two, and last placed teams will play the best Division B teams to qualify for the next season’s Division A.
Round two of the World Cup qualifiers will be held in late 2018 and early 2019.
Teams will be split in groups of six, totaling four groups in Europe and two in the other qualifiers.
Teams will carry over the points from round one, and face another three teams again in a home-and-away round-robin. The best teams in each group will qualify for the World Cup.
