REZE, France – The phrase sounds old, but back at the start of the 21st century this was the place to be to watch the best young up-and-coming women’s basketball players in the world. Reze annually hosted the RBI, Reze Basketball International, featuring the best u17 or u18 under teams in Europe as well as their own French National team.
Reze is now the “Road to Rio” for five of the 12 National Women’s Teams competing in this week’s FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament. (#FIBAOQT) Play started on Monday and goes through to Sunday, June 19th in the Le Trocardiere arena. The USA will ultimately get the No. 2 and No. 4 qualifier in their Group B along with Americas winner Canada and Euro winner Serbia in Rio this August.
The teams here are those who didn’t win their FIBA Zone championship. The USA, by virtue of being the 2012 Olympic champion, and host Brazil are already slotted along with Canada, Serbia, Australia (Oceania), Japan (Asia) and Senegal (Africa). The traditional powers France, Spain, China, Cuba and Turkey are here. The big name missing is Russia which finished 6th losing to Turkey 68-66 while failing to qualify in the Euros. Their next best group finished runner-up to the USA last summer in Moscow at the FIBA u19 World Championships.
The format has the 12 National Women’s teams playing in four pools (Groups) of three teams over the first three days of competition followed by the top two Group teams moving on to a cross-bracket quarterfinals with the winners going to Rio on Friday. The losing teams compete for the 5th spot on Saturday and Sunday. There is no championship in Reze as the four semifinal winners do not play again and qualify for Rio.
The big Group A game was Monday evening between host France a smaller Cuba. France was too big and wore out an older Cuban squad 83-67. The Cubans had given other teams fits in Edmonton, Canada at the FIBA Americas and also the PanAm’s in Toronto. The same thing that occurred in Canada plagued Cuba once again, as they failed to keep pace with younger teams with height.
An older Belarus team (29 average years of age) was lucky to run against a younger but much less experienced team from Nigeria. A few of the Nigerian players returned from the u19 squad that qualified but was a no show in Chile due to money issues back in 2010. The lack of international experience showed as Belarus took an early lead and kept it to the finish with a 71-60 Group C win. Moving forward, Korea is slightly favored over Belarus to win Group C. The Group D Tuesday morning showdown between China and Spain should show who gets the top spot vs. Group C2. The tallest team here, China (6’1”average) dominated over a smaller (5’9”) Venezuela 77-59 in Group D. Two of those will need to battle to possibly fight for 5th place started with Argentina beating Cameroon 75-64 (Group B).
After the first day it looks like the eventual quarterfinals (and ticket to Rio) will be France (A1) facing Argentina (B2); Turkey (B1) vs. Cuba (A2); Belarus and Korea fighting for C1 or C2 with Spain and China, which play Tuesday morning, going after D1 or D2. France gets through the semifinals with Spain and China wining crossovers. Belarus could take Group C or make it through the 5th place eliminator. What exactly determines the 1-5 seeds in Rio hadn’t been discovered yet.
Many of the rosters here are tending to be older with a lot of experience and professional play necessary for top flight Olympic competition. I got to see many of these younger players back in 2013 u19s Worlds in Chile and then again at the FIBA Americas and PanAm games both in Canada this past summer.
One “experienced” player whose FIBAOQT presence surprised me was former Duke point guard Lindsay Harding who’s representing Belarus. At 32 years old, there is not room on any USA roster for her ever to play. Two other famous American guards, Becky Hammon (Colorado St./Russia) and Epiphany Prince (Rutgers/Russia) both have previously donned Russian jerseys.
The highest profile US college player here is big guard and impact player Leticia Romero, 21, from Florida State who’s earned her spot from a young age playing for Spain. Women’s international basketball will continue to draw more college coaches seeking talent as two countries here have at least four players who’ve attended US schools. I was stunned to see Cameroon with four: Brittany Starling, 22, Upstate, SC; Tia Weledji, 20, Princeton, NJ; Nelly Weledji, 22, Brown, RI; Maeva Teinkela, 23, Hofstra, NY. New Zealand features: Kalani Purcell, 21, BYU, UT; Stella Beck, 20, St. Mary’s, CA; Penina Davidson, 20, Cal-Berkeley; Josephine Stockill, 22, Colgate, NY. Another player, Diana Cabrera, 22, Union, FL plays for Argentina to round out the list of USA college people chasing Rio.
This is the big event at the Senior (women’s) level but at the end of the month in Zaragoza, Spain FIBA will hold the u17s World Championships. There’s a lot of young NCAA recruited talent heading to Spain and now that the NCAA has allowed its college coaches to attend FIBA Championship events, expect a slew of head coaches and recruiting coordinators to be courtside for those games.
FIBA has made watching this event a pleasure instead of a task. It looks like the best basketball will be played here within an hour flight between France and Spain and its all available right on your computer screen. If you plan to watch any of these games on FIBA’s network the best day for a mini “Rio Preview” is easily Friday when the Quarterfinals will be played. All four winners advance and losers are left to fight it out.
