IRELAND’S senior women’s team will compete in the qualifiers for the FIBA Women’s EuroBasket 2023. It’s the first time since 2009 that Ireland’s senior women will play in Europe’s top tier competition. The group draw for the EuroBasket qualifiers takes place in Munich on Friday, with Ireland’s first fixtures due to take place in November.
A decision on the Irish senior men will be made next year, when the application process for FIBA EuroBasket 2024 qualifiers opens up. Submissions to play in the competition must be made to FIBA by August 2022.
The qualifying groups for the FIBA Women’s EuroBasket 2023 will have no more than four teams, and Ireland will play each team on a home and away basis in a round robin system. Ireland will be vying for one of 14 available tournament places on offer, with hosts Israel and Slovakia already automatically qualified.
Basketball Ireland’s interim CEO, Paddy Boyd, said: “We lodged our application with FIBA in July to play in the FIBA Women’s EuroBasket 2023 and this is a significant signal of intent for our sport. This gives our senior women the chance to compete against Europe’s best, having reached the final of the FIBA Women’s European Championship for Small Countries last month. Irish basketball will be dining at the top table of European basketball and we cannot wait for the qualifying draw on August 20th, where we could see the likes of Spain or France playing here in Dublin.
“Our Irish senior men did our country proud last week and have made a compelling case to play in the 2024 FIBA EuroBasket, but we have to wait until next year to put forward our application to FIBA, when those qualifiers are due to start.”
Chair of the Elite Performance Committee (EPC), Tim Rice, outlined why the EPC made the decision for the senior women to take the step up: “Our underage women’s teams have had a lot of success recently, with a silver in 2017 at the FIBA U18 European Championships and bronze at the FIBA U20 European Championships in 2019. Some of those players have now migrated to the senior team, while our senior team has reached the final of the FIBA European Championship for Small Countries twice in recent years, in 2016 and again this year. We want to give those players a chance to further test themselves against Europe’s elite and are hugely excited to be competing in EuroBasket qualifiers.
He added: “Our senior men were dominant in the FIBA European Championship for Small Countries when they took home gold. Naturally they will want to take the step up too, which we are looking into ahead of the FIBA application deadline for the 2024 FIBA EuroBasket qualifiers.”
There are three international windows for the FIBA Women’s EuroBasket 2023 qualifiers, with two games per window, taking place on November 11th and 14th 2021, November 24th and 27th 2022, with third window on February 9th and 12th 2023.
