Virgin Islands looking to advance to the second round against a renovated Bahamas

San Juan (FIBA Basketball World Cup Americas Qualifiers 2019) — The third qualifying window to the FIBA Basketball World Cup China 2019 will start on the Puerto Rican capital of San Juan with the last ticket of Group D in play.

The National Teams from the US Virgin Islands and the Bahamas will meet in the Roberto Clemente stadium as part of the double game day in the mythic Puerto Rican building, which will serve as the local stage for the Virgin Islanders.

The Virgin Islands have a record of 1-3, while the Bahamas (0-4) have not won any of their four games in a group that has been dominated by the Dominican Republic (4-0) and Canada (3-1), both with tickets to the second part of the window that starts in September.

With a victory on Thursday, the Virgin Islanders assure their ticket to the second round while eliminating the Bahamas. The only win by the Virgin Islands in these Qualifiers was precisely against the Bahamas, in November, with a score of 93-85. The Bahamas need to win by nine points or more to to keep their hopes alive of going on to the next phase. 

But on this occasion, the Virgin Islands will meet with a renewed Bahamas, thanks in part to their addition of NBA Sacramento Kings’ guard Buddy Hield.

“I coached against him at college. Players like Buddy will make their game. We will make him work as hard as possible. We have to limit the second change points as much as possible,” coach Jerome Tang to FIBA.basketball. This is his debut leading the Virgin Islands. 

Even though he coaches the team in a critical stage of the Qualifiers, Tang is confident about his responsibility. “I have seen him play and I have coached eight of those players in the junior league. We are familiarized with them.”

However, point guard Ángel Rivera pointed out the importance of the game, since the results of this game rollover to the second round if the Virgin Islands qualify.

“We have to stick to the game plan: we have to be more aggressive than them, to limit Hield’s offense,” said Rivera. “If we stick to the plan, we can be victorious,” added Rivera, who played last for the National Team in the 2017 AmeriCup.

 

“There is a little bit of a rivalry between the Virgin Islands and the Bahamas. We have defeated them consistently since 2015. We have to keep that in mind,” said the player.

On their part, the Bahamas are breathing an air of confidence, since on this ocassion the result will be very different from the one seen last November.

“We were very weak on defense those first few games. We had a close game against the Virgin Islands, but we lost the ball a lot of times and we had a bad defense. We have nine new players. We are better athletically and, on the defense,” pointed out the coach Mario Bowleg.

Bahamas is repeating Jaraun Burrows and Shaquille Cleare, but are reinforced with Hield and the new additions of Lourawls Nairn, Lynden Rose, Kadeem Coleby, Travis Munnings, Danrad Knowles, Joshua Cornish, Zane Knowles, and Dwight Coleby.

“It feels good to be back representing my country. We will try to advance to the second round. We will have fun and compete,” said Hield, who will play for the Bahamas for the first time since Centrobasket2014.

FIBA