MAPUTO (FIBA World Championship for Women) - Three months of preparations overseas have given Mozambique the level and rhythm of competition needed for the 2014 FIBA World Championship for Women, says the team captain Deolinda Ngulela.

Playing at Turkey 2014 will mark the Southern Africans' first-ever appearance in the leading international women's tournament.

And the Nasir Sale-coached team has travelled as far as Asia and Europe in order to fill the gap of domestic competition.

Despite competing in the 2014 Lusophone Games in India earlier this year, Mozambique last played an official FIBA game last October in the Final of AfroBasket Women 2013, losing on home soil to Angola.

Since then, most of the players that formed that team took part in the two-week, four–team national championship in April.

The training camps held in Japan, China, and the Czech Republic, Ngulela says, were what they needed most: "The team is well and we are ready for the challenge of facing the best national teams in the world."

They will open their Group B campaign squaring off against Canada on 27 September, before facing France, the runners-up at EuroBasket Women 2013 the following day in Ankara. They close their Group Phase playing hosts Turkey on 30 September.

And the Turkish capital city has to be symbolic for Ngulela and Co.

It was in Ankara that they made their world stage debut, two summers ago at the 2012 FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament for Women (OQTW) in which they faced Korea and Croatia, but missed out on qualifying for the London Games.

"This time our experience in Turkey has to be better than the great hospitality we received there. We will compete as hard as we can to win games," Ngulela said in a phone interview from Maputo, a couple of days before traveling to Serbia for the remainder of Mozambique's preparations.

"We hope to play the best of our abilities."

With the exception of Clarisse Machanguana, who retired after the African Championship, coach Nasir Sale is expected to make no more than three additions.

FIBA