Gilas Pilipinas grouped with heavyweight Australia, Japan, Taipei in Asian qualifiers of Fiba World Cup

The Official Draw Ceremony of the Qualifiers for the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019 took place at a star-studded event in Guangzhou, China. There were four different draws, one for each region – Africa, Americas, Asia (which includes Oceania) and Europe.

Here are the results of the draws:

• GROUP A: China, New Zealand, Korea, Hongkong
• GROUP B: Japan, Taipei, Australia, Philippines
• GROUP C: Syria, Lebanon, India, Jordan
• GROUP D: Iraq, Qatar, Kazakhstan, Iran

Starting in November, the 80 national sides will play home and away games across six qualifying windows spanning a 15-month period to be among the 31 joining hosts China in lining out at the first-ever 32 team edition of FIBA’s flagship event.

Here is a region by region breakdown of the number of teams participating in the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019 Qualifiers and how many of them will advance to China 2019 from each region.

A peak into the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019 – Asian Qualifiers official site shows the schedule of games for Gilas Pilipinas in Group B. They will kick off their campaign on Nov. 24 against Japan and then take on Chinese-Taipei on Nov. 27.

Gilas resumes its bid in 2018 starting with Australia on the Feb. 22. Japan comes next on Feb. 25, Chinese-Taipei on Feb. 29 before wrapping up the group phase against Australia on July 2, 2018. The top three teams will qualify to the second round and face teams from other groups with carry-over results. To better understand the tournament mechanics check out the video below. More details and information can be found here.



Attending the milestone event on the Road to China 2019 were: Mr Horacio Muratore, FIBA President; Mr Patrick Baumann, FIBA Secretary General and International Olympic (IOC) Committee Member; Mr Xu Ruisheng, Vice Governor of Guangdong Province; Mr Wang Dong, Vice Mayor of Guangzhou City; Mr Yao Ming, President of Chinese Basketball Association (CBA).

They were joined by members of FIBA’s Central Board and national federation representatives of the teams participating in the Qualifiers. Also present were representatives of FIBA Partners Beijing Enterprises Group, Molten, Nike, Tencent and Wanda.

SOURCE: http://sports.mb.com.ph/2017/05/08/fiba-basketball-world-cup-2019-gilas-pilipinas-in-group-b-with-australia-chinese-taipei-and-japan/