SEN - Senegal’s home talent emerge along coach Cheikh Sarr

LUANDA (AfroBasket/FIBA Basketball World Cup) - A team like Senegal with a lot foreign-based talents is taking home players and coaching staff very seriously.

Senegal is one of the few African countries – along Nigeria – gifted with players in major worldwide leagues like the NBA, Spain’s ACB, France’s LNB and the Greek league.

In August, they secured one of three places on offer for African teams for the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup to be staged in Spain.

But what made Senegal unique was the unusual high presence of home-based players.

Mamadou Ndoye, Mohamed Diop, Ibrahima Mbengue and Pape Malick Gadiag, all played a key role in the team’s success in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.

Head coach Cheikh Sarr is also a home-based element.

He served as an assistant in the past two AfroBasket tournaments, but when the country’s Basketball Federation called him to replace Frenchman Alain Weisz, he was confident that he knew how to improve Senegal’s rankings.

They moved from a fifth-place two years ago in Madagascar to accomplish a place on the podium this year.

Sarr, a physical education teacher in Dakar, took over and made sure to give home-based players a chance, and they responded positively.

Mamadou Ndoye, for instance, had a solid showing throughout the tournament.

He hit a three-pointer with twelve seconds remaining followed by a free-throw to seal a 57-56 win over the 2013 AfroBasket hosts Cote d’Ivoire that allowed them to finish third, and  gave them a place in Spain.

Although Diop has only played five of their seven games in Abidjan, he averaged the team’s second highest field goal percentage behind Hamady Ndiaye.

Mbengue and Gadiaga followed suit with consistent performances.

"My players were hungry for this moment," Sarr told FIBA.com.

"When we first started preparing some foreign-based players refused to join us saying that we were not going to qualify to the World Cup."

The victory means Senegal will return to the World Cup for the first time since 2006.

For coach Sarr, this is "a great achievement. They asked us to qualify for the World Cup regardless of our place in the table, and we did it," he said.

What is the way forward for Sarr now?

"Prospection and planning are now my priorities," he said.

"This team deserves a lot of attention and care, and we must be at our best in the World Cup.

"I’ll be doing my homework for them."

But for Sarr and his team to succeed in Spain, he insists they’ll need to bring together the Ministry of Sports and the Senegal Basketball Federation in order to make things work.

Senegal registered a 5-2 record at AfroBasket 2013.

They conceded their biggest loss margin in the last decade following a 74-46 against Cote d’Ivoire in Group A.

However, in the re-match, and the final day of competition, Sarr and his team made sure that humiliating defeat would not be repeated.

"We lost the first game against Cote d’Ivoire because we didn’t know much about them. And Charles Abouo’s 15 points (nine coming from behind the arc) destroyed us because we played man-to-man," he explained.

Sarr made the homework, and Abouo finished scoreless in the re-match.

"We did a good scout on them and decided to avoid playing man-to-man. We protected the paint, forced them to shoot and this is how we beat them in the third-place game," Sarr said.

FIBA