Jordan national basketball team prepares for 2021 FIBA Asia Cup

AMMAN – Jordan’s national basketball team has restarted preparations for the FIBA Asia Cup 2021 to be held in Jakarta, Indonesia in August.

The basketball team qualification to the continent’s leading basketball tournament came after an unbeaten streak in qualifiers hosted in Amman, which seemed to make up for the football squad’s elimination from World Cup qualifiers in the same week, following which the head coach was dismissed after a miserable performance. 

The basketball squad, playing without well-known stars, and without a naturalised player, beat all odds after an inconsistent preparation period marred with the COVID-19 outbreak and postponements. However, former national team star Marwan Ma’touq succeeded in adopting a strategy and adapting players who were previously not given the chance to play much on the national team level to lead the team to qualification. The coach enlisted former star Wisam Sous and Mohammad Hamdan as his coaching staff, and relied on a new line-up of players that promise well for Jordan’s future in the game.

In an interview with The Jordan Times, Ma’touq, whose squad now awaits the draw to be held in July, said: “Our qualifying mission is accomplished.”

Although matches were played in Amman with no fans, the relatively new line-up managed to seal the qualifiers with an unbeaten run and moved alongside Kazakhstan from Group F to join Lebanon, Bahrain, Syria, Iran, South Korea, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, China, Kazakhstan and the Philippines joining hosts Indonesia, leaving three spots that are still to be decided to determine the 16 participants in the upcoming FIBA Asia Cup in Jakarta.

In its qualifying journey, Jordan had beaten Sri Lanka 100-45 and Kazakhstan 71-68 before the COVID-19 pandemic postponed the world sporting agenda in 2020. Jordan’s matches were again postponed in February 2021 when the team was hit with COVID-19 during their Bahrain training camp.

As the new dates were set for the Amman’s qualifiers, observers doubted the team’s competitive chances especially after friendlies where the team lost to Saudi Arabia 89-69, then beat Qatar 69-57, before scoring a 76-74 win over Saudi Arabia in the second match.

Despite the odds, the players were up to the challenge and seemed to improve from one match to the other. As they resumed qualifiers, they beat Palestine twice 88-77 and 79-76, and Kazakhstan 80-70. The Sri Lankan team’s results are to be decided after they did not to participate due to COVID fears.

Ma’touk underlined confidence in his line-up noting: “We will be playing at a different level in FIBA Asia and I urge fans to stand behind Jordan’s new national squad.” While the difficulties and challenges the national team always faces should not be held as an excuse, he again stated the need for a basketball court assigned for national team training. “That has always been a necessity, and now we also have COVID related difficulties, no foreign recruit yet on the line-up combined with the absence of key players, he added.

Jordan’s best showing at the FIBA Asia Cup (previously called FIBA Asia Championship) was third in 2009 and runner-up in 2011 when they reached the final for the first time in the country’s history, but lost the chance of qualifying to the 2012 Olympic Games after losing the final 70-69 to China. Jordan then played the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament (OQT) but lost to Puerto Rico and Greece and was eliminated. 

Twenty-four teams are divided into six groups of four teams and the top two from each of the six groups qualify for the FIBA Asia Cup, making a total of 12 teams. The six 3rd place teams from each group qualify to play in a final qualifying tournament and the top four teams from this tournament will qualify for the 2021 FIBA Asia Cup.