The Brazilian Confederation set their sights on their next goal: the FIBA Women's 3x3 World Cup

SÃO PAULO - FIBA Announced this Tuesday the groups for the FIBA Women’s 3x3 World Cup, which will take place in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on May 4 and 5. The Brazilian women's national team are in Group B along Spain, New Zealand and Mali. Estonia, Uganda, Australia and Puerto Rico are in Group A.

The Brazilian Basketball Confederation (CBB, for its Portuguese acronym) started out their year with a goal: to try to get one of the three available spots, which is why they're taking the necessary steps to begin to prepare the women's national team.

In the first phase the teams will face each other within their corresponding groups. The winners of each group will go on directly to the semi-finals. The second and third-place teams will dispute the quarter finals. The three teams in the final will secure their ticket to the FIBA 3x3 World Cup, which will take place in Amsterdam from June 18 to 23.

The technical team of the 3x3 Brazilian women’s national team is led by coaches Luca Carvalho and Rafaella Bauerfeldt. For Carvalho, the Brazilian group is quite strong, and he believes that due to the process they've been developing, the national team will be truly ready to fight for a spot in the FIBA 3x3 World Cup.

“Our athletes are at a great technical level to conform a strong national team that's capable of playing against all teams; not only in the Qualifiers, but also against those that have already qualified to the World Cup. Our group is very strong. The Mali national team are Africa Cup champions, and the New Zelanders won the Asia Cup after defeating teams like Australia and China. Spain have partaken in challenging tournaments in Europe; they're a tall team that features Paula Palomares, a player with great strength in the offense. Despite the difficulties, I believe that in the technical sense we're not behind any national team. Now we must focus on planning and studying our adversaries well to avoid any surprises in the future,” added Carvalho.

Rafaella detailed what would be the planning process for the competition and shared her joy for representing Brazil once again.

“I'm very happy to represent Brazil, and even more so in the 3x3, an Olympic event. This FIBA 3x3 World Cup is the first large competition organized by FIBA in the women's category, and we're going to give it all to get that spot. We're going to face greater challenges toward the competition, so we have to prepare the best way we can to get one of the three spots,” pointed out the coach.

“We started to plan this by the end of last year, with the observations we did in the final stage of the 3x3 National Basketball Circuit. Now CBB wants to summon players in two dates; one, on March 16 and 17 in Rio de Janeiro; and another, in the end of March in São Paulo. This is to evaluate the players better and from there think about shortlisting six or eight athletes for a training phase before getting on the plane to San Juan,” added Raffaella.

As for the men’s category, the Brazilian national team have already qualified to the World Cup since they're in the twelfth position of the FIBA rankings. Brazil are in Group D, with Latvia, Poland, Japan and another adversary that is yet to be defined.

The seventeen best countries of both the men’s and women’s category in the FIBA ranking will guarantee their direct ticket to the World Cup. Brazil’s women's national team will play in the Qualifiers to strive for the eighteenth place in the ranking that was last updated on March 1, 2019.

FIBA