… Stanton Rose Jr returns as captain
By Rawle Toney
THE Guyana Amateur Basketball Federation (GABF) yesterday announced the squad that will journey to El Salvador to compete in the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023 Americas Pre-Qualifiers at the José Adolfo Pineda National Gymnasium.
Stanton Rose Jr, the 2018 Caribbean Basketball Confederation (CBC) Championship Most Valuable Player (MVP), will return as the team’s captain to lead the team in San Salvador.
Anthony Moe, Travis Belgrave, Timothy Thompson and Harold Adams are the players returning from the 2018 CBC Championship-winning team, while Yonnick Tappin, Terron Welsh, Israel Yaw and Nicholai Smith are making a return to coach Junior Hercules’ squad.
Meanwhile, FIBA Champions League (2018) and FIBA Intercontinental Cup (2019) winner, Delroy James, will have this first taste of international basketball.
The 33-year-old who was a standout for Rhode Island University and has had considerable success on the European League circuit, most notably with AEK Athens, is actually back in Guyana for the first time since he migrated as a six-year-old.
Delroy’s brother, Gordon James, Moe and Berkeley College point guard Deylon Anthony are the overseas-based players on the roster.
Meanwhile, Guyana will bounce off their campaign at 21:00hrs on April 15 against Nicaragua followed by Jamaica (April 16 at 18:00hrs), El Salvador (April 17 at 21:00hrs) and Costa Rica on April 18 at 21:00hrs. A GABF release said all the team’s matches will be aired on local Cable provider, E-Networks’ E1 channel.
Jamaica is a late addition to the qualifiers, with FIBA’s Americas Regional office stating that it has a mission “to develop and promote our sport, and to that purpose, a group of strategic objectives have been established. One of those is the Empowerment of Federations through encouraging the participation in international competitions and increasing the number of National Federations participating in the top groups.”
“Over the past couple of days, we’ve received late requests from the sub-zone National Federations requesting to be allowed to participate in the CONCENCABA Pre-Qualifier for the 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup that will take place in El Salvador.
After a thorough assessment of those requests by our Regional office, in combination with FIBA’s Headquarters, we’ve concluded that Jamaica’s request has merit for being in compliance with our registration procedures. All other late requests were denied on the basis of breaching FIBA’s registration procedures,” FIBA said.
The top-three teams will advance to the second round of the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023 – Americas Pre-Qualifiers in July 2021.