The Bahamas senior men's national basketball team has made its final cut, ahead of the Caribbean Basketball Confederation (CBC) Senior Championships in Tortola, British Virgin Islands this week. The men will begin play tomorrow against St. Vincent and the Grenadines at 12 noon local time. The tournament will run until July 5.
The 12 players who were chosen to represent The Bahamas are: Alonzo "C.J." Hinds, Marvin Gray, Ray Rose, L.J. Rose, Mitchell Johnson, Eugene Bain, Scottie Farrington, Bennet Davis, Dwight Coleby, Kadeem Coleby, Magnum Rolle and Anwar Ferguson.
The Bahamas will be one of four teams in Group A, alongside Antigua and Barbuda, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Cuba. Group B consists of the U.S. Virgin Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Guyana and Barbados.
On June 20, the country sent 24 of the its top players to Fort Collins, Colorado to train. The head coach of Team Bahamas is Colorado State University (CSU) Head Coach Larry Eustachy; the Bahamian team trained at CSU's gym, Moby Arena.
The group of players assembled for the workouts was considered one of the best in a long time, and the length of time it took to make a verdict on the final roster spoke volumes to the skill level of each player present. The talent pool was mostly made up of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I players and professional players.
"I would like to thank Charles Robins, Bahamas Basketball Federation (BBF) president; Mario Bowleg, BBF vice president; Steve Barnes, CSU assistant coach; Colorado State University and the Fort Collins community, not to mention the entire Bahamas Basketball Federation for all of their efforts and support over the past nine days," said Eustachy.
"It took a tremendous amount of work to make this training camp a success. The past nine days could not have been better. To cut from 24 players to 12 was not easy, but we feel that we have the right 12. The difficulty of the decision really speaks to the amount of talent gathered for this camp and the support of the entire Bahamas Basketball Federation."
The team needs to finish in the top three at the CBC Championships in order to qualify for the Centrobasket Championship later this summer. Those championships will be held in Tepic, Nayarit, in west-central Mexico. Centrobasket is a FIBA-sponsored basketball tournament where national teams from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean participate. FIBA (International Basketball Federation) is the world's governing body for basketball.
The countries in the Centrobasket region make up the Central American and Caribbean Confederation (CONCENCABA). The top four teams from Centrobasket advance to the FIBA Americas Championship, where they have a chance to qualify for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
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