LUGANO (EuroBasket Division B) - Switzerland won't be playing at the EuroBasket this year in Lithuania, despite the expansion of the tournament to 24 teams.

But national team forward Derek Stockalper says the decision to have more sides taking part has fuelled the desire of all the Swiss players to make it to the big event one day.

For them to have a realistic chance of making it, though, a very important player needs to be in the squad.

"I think that we're going to need Thabo Sefolosha, the guy that plays in the NBA," said Stockalper, who plays for Lugano Basket.

"We're going to need him to come back.

"He's been like hit and miss.

"One summer he's come back and then the other summer he just stays in the States and works out.

"For us to be a real contender, we need him and another guy that just picked up his citizenship, Greg Brunner - he plays for (Benetton) Treviso and just picked up his (Swiss) citizenship.

"We'll definitely need him as well.

"We can create a pretty decent team, a competitive team at least, if everyone comes back."

There is no doubt that seeing the tournament field having eight more teams has made the Swiss even more desperate to reach the event.

"It's going to give us a lot more motivation because of the opportunity to play better teams," he said.

Stockalper wasn't able to help the team last year as they took aim at promotion to Division A.

"Yes, this past summer I tweaked my ankle pretty good in the first pre-season game for the Swiss team and ended up sitting out the whole summer, but I played for the national team three summers before that," he said.

Switzerland managed to beat Cyprus 70-67 but then fell 60-52 to Slovakia and 99-92 to the Czech Republic.

Brunner averaged 16 points and 11.3 rebounds per game for the Swiss last summer but Sefolosha didn't play.

FIBA