Jordan takes on Tunisia at Arab Basketball Championship

AMMAN — Jordan will play Tunisia on Wednesday in their second match at the Arab Nations Basketball Championship currently under way in Dubai.

The national team is playing in Group 1 alongside Libya and the UAE to whom they unexpectedly lost 85-81 (41-47) in the opening match. 

The 24th edition of the championship has only seven teams competing after Qatar and Syria declined. Lebanon, Somalia and Algeria are playing in Group B. The top four teams will move to round 2 following which the winners will advance to the semifinal round.

Jordan’s squad is missing Zeid Abbas and Mousa Awadi due to injury as well as Ahmad Dweiri who plays in the Turkish league and Dar Tucker the naturliased pro, as well as,  Mahmoud Abdeen.

The Arab Championship precedes window two of the Asian qualifiers for the world’s premier basketball competition, the Basketball World Cup, in which Jordan will play Lebanon and Indonesia on February 24 and 27.

“We have a hard task against Lebanon in the upcoming qualifiers, but hope that the line-up will be up to the challenge. The league does not allow for better preparation, and the Arab Championship will hopefully help us put finishing touches on all preparations,” the team’s coach, former team star Wisam Al Sous, who played in the 2010 World Cup, noted. Sous underlined “the squad has their eyes set on reaching the World Cup.”

Jordan is now second in Group C after winning 68-61 and losing 72-64 against Saudi Arabia window 1 of the Basketball World Cup Asian qualifiers as national sides play home and away games across three windows in Round 1. Lebanon lead the group with two wins.

Twelve teams will make it to Round 2, which will also have three windows up to February 2023. From the sixteen Asian nations competing there will be seven representing the continent at the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023. 

The Asian/Oceania qualifiers are Group A: India, South Korea, New Zealand and the Philippines.

Group B: Australia, China, Chinese Taipei and Japan. Group C: Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. Group D: Bahrain, Iran, Kazakhstan and Syria.

Jordan previously reached the FIBA Basketball World Cup in 2010 and 2019, becoming the first and only Jordanian team to actually reach a World Cup in a team sport alongside the junior men’s team in 1995.

The next edition of the FIBA Basketball World Cup will take place from August 25 to September 10, 2023 in Indonesia, Japan and the Philippines with seven nations from Asia and Oceania qualifying for the 32 country field. As event hosts, Indonesia, Japan and the Philippines have automatically qualify. Asia was last on the World Cup podium back in 1954 when the Philippines placed third.

The tournament will serve as qualification for the 2024 Summer Olympics, where the top two teams from each of the Americas and Europe, and the top team from each of Africa, Asia and Oceania, will qualify alongside the tournament’s host France.

Last year, Jordan qualified to the FIBA Asia Cup  after an unbeaten streak in qualifiers hosted in Amman. The FIBA Asia Cup 2021 will be played in Jakarta, Indonesia, but is now rescheduled to July 2022, right after the window of the FIBA Basketball World Cup Asia qualifiers.

Jordan, playing without its well-known stars and without a naturalised pro, beat all odds after an inconsistent preparation period marred with the COVID-19 outbreak and postponements. However, then coach, former national team star Marwan Ma’touq led the team to qualification, enlisting Sous and Mohammad Hamdan as his coaching staff, and relying on a new line-up of players that promise well for Jordan’s future in the game.

The relatively new line-up managed to seal the qualifiers with an unbeaten run and moved alongside Kazakhstan from Group F to be one of 16 teams in the upcoming FIBA Asia Cup.