1 Nov 2019
UTSUNOMIYA (Japan) – FIBA announced and seeded the 20 teams per gender who will compete at the FIBA 3x3 Olympic Qualifying Tournament in India in March 2020.
Though they did not earn a direct ticket to the first-ever 3x3 event in the history of the Olympic Games, a total of 20 teams per gender can still make it to Tokyo after qualifying for the FIBA 3x3 Olympic Qualifying Tournament (OQT), which will grant 3 tickets to the Olympics by gender.
The teams made it to the OQT due to being hosts (India and Japan’s women), thanks to their medal at the FIBA 3x3 World Cup 2019 or because they were the highest-ranked teams in the FIBA 3x3 Federation Ranking not yet qualified.
One of 3x3’s missions is to bring basketball to new countries, which are not traditional basketball powerhouses and FIBA has put in place a series of universality rules. A maximum of 10 teams per continent and a minimum of 30 different countries must take part at the Olympic Qualifying Tournament. In other words, only the top 6 teams qualified for the OQT based on ranking could have a team both in men and women (like France, the Netherlands and USA). The last 10 berths in each gender were allocated following the Federation Ranking list only if the respective country didn’t already have a team in any gender qualified.
The automatic seeding was completed during a livestreamed ceremony in Utsunomiya, Japan on November 1, 2019. The 20 teams per gender were seeded in 4 pools of 5. Women’s Pool D will see the Indian hosts face off with former world champions Italy. Chinese Taipei and Switzerland. The reigning world champions USA’s men will compete in Pool B alongside Europe Cup 2019 bronze medalists Lithuania, Belgium, New Zealand and South Korea.
