mojo13 wrote:The other wild card is there could be some solid teams from the hosting nations (ie Turkey, Russia etc). However they say priority will be given to the qualifier teams to host (which would then drag the next highest finishing team from their zone in - for example, if Canada hosts, then DR gets in, if France hosts then Latvia gets in.). Hopefully yhe qualified teams host so we avoid bringing Russia, Turkey, Germany etc into the competition.
Also hoping FIBA does something dumb and dumps the Asia/America/Oceania/African teams mostly into one pool and we avoid the big three (France/Serbia/Greece). I still think we can beat (and likely be favored against) any other team than those three.
Maybe I am reading too much into this, but I think the fact that they didn't play games to decide 9th place might mean they will have max one host from Europe. I think there is a decent probability that that one team is one of the 5 qualified or Finland. Either way, we get Latvia or Finland, and avoid Turkey, Slovenia, Croatia, or another really tough team.
That being said, I am not sure how much separation there is among the top Euro teams and Latvia and Finland. The whole tournament seemed pretty competitive. E.g., Spain lost to Italy and only beat Germany by 1 (I believe that if they had lost that game, which was their last of the round robin, they wouldn't have made the playoffs).
Re the allocation of the 18 teams, I really don't know what to expect.
Re format of tournament, I have not seen anything re whether it will be full round robin with no playoffs, full round robin with a final, or some other format.
Re the timing of the tournaments, FIBA website still says July 5-10, and Toronto Star and other sites have reported July 5-11, but Grange reported that timing has yet to be determined. I think August is better than July for us, as more time for Bennett, Nicholson, and Thompson to sign contracts, and avoids summer league conflicts for Lyles, Murray, and perhaps Hanlan.
