After the Croatia national basketball team registered only one victory in the World Cup qualifiers, it became clear that the path to EuroBasket 2025 would be anything but easy.
That path brings pre-qualifications, or qualifications before the actual qualifications, and today, Croatia learned who they will play against in that stage of the competition, which starts next month. Namely, it is just before this year’s EuroBasket, in which Croatia will play the group stage in Italy.
Croatia is in the first pot with five other national teams, which in the end turned out to be the most challenging draw possible – Poland, Switzerland, and Austria.
A total of 12 national teams were divided into three groups of four, whereby six nations, including Croatia, came from the European qualifiers for the 2023 FIBA World Cup and were assigned to specific groups in advance.
The remaining six teams were seeded according to their results in the first pre-qualification round, with one group winner and one non-group winner drawn into each group.
In the end, the prequalification groups for EuroBasket look like this:
Group D: Slovakia, Denmark, North Macedonia, Norway
Group E: Poland, Switzerland, Austria, Croatia
Group F: Cyprus, Romania, Portugal, Bulgaria
The second round of pre-qualifications will be played on three dates in August 2022, November 2022, and February 2023, and the winner of each group will qualify for FIBA EuroBasket 2025.
Cyprus is guaranteed a place in the qualifications as one of the hosts of EuroBasket 2025.
National teams that do not advance from the second round will join those from the first round of pre-qualifications in the third round of pre-qualifications for FIBA EuroBasket 2025, which will be the last chance for all teams to secure a place in the European Championship qualifiers.
EuroBasket 2025 will be held in Cyprus, Latvia, and Finland.
Source: HKS
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