East African teams stand in Rwanda’s route to the semi-finals. Uganda’s gazelles lock horns with DRC’s leopards in a play-in match to determine Rwanda’s opponent in the quarter-finals.
KIGALI- The 2023 FIBA Women’s AfroBasket has reached a thrilling stage, with the group phase games completed and the top teams advanced to the quarter-finals, the other eight teams will have to go through the classification round to the Quarter-Finals (Play-in games) to fill the remaining four quarter-final spots.
Dr. Cheikh Sarr’s Rwanda topped Group A after beating Côte d’Ivoire in their opening game with a huge difference, and falling to Angola in the second game. Côte d’Ivoire defeated Angola leaving the Group ranking intricate, However, Rwanda came out on top as the points differential was used as a tiebreaker.
Cameroon advanced to the quarter-finals after defeating Mozambique and Guinea in Group B.
Uganda’s gazelles shocked the tournament pretenders Senegal to seize a good place in Group C. Following a defeat to tournament heavyweights Mali, Alberto Antuna’s gazelles defeated 11-time African champions Senegal to finish second and escape Egypt.
Mali won Group C and advanced through to the playoffs, while Uganda and Senegal, who finished second and third in the group, will face DRC and Egypt in play-in matches, respectively.
DR Congo, the other East African country contesting in the tournament, struggled throughout the Group D games, losing to Egypt and Nigeria both by significant margins and will face Uganda, the second-ranked team in Group C, as the bottom finishers.
The Congolese will face Rwanda in the 2023 AfroBasket quarter-finals if they progress past Uganda this Tuesday, August 1st. in what is considered an East African affair. The matchup confirms that, for the first time since 2005, East Africa will have a team in the semi-finals.
In 2005, DR Congo finished fourth in the tournament won by the host country, Nigeria.
