Nigeria’s U-19 women’s basketball team, Junior D’Tigress, were yesterday, drawn alongside Portugal, Canada and China in Group B of the 2025 U-19 World Cup scheduled to hold in Brno, Czech Republic, from July 12 to 20.
Yesterday’s draws was conducted by Czech Republic’s former national team stars, Ivana Becerova and Eva Viteckova, with Nigeria in Pot 4 alongside Hungary, Argentina, and Brazil.
In other pairings, USA, Israel, Hungary and Korea are in Group A. Group C has Australia, France, Brazil and Africa’s second team, Mali. Group D contains Japan, Czech Republic, Argentina and Spain.
The Junior D’Tigress qualified to represent Africa in this year’s event by finishing as runners-up to Mali at the U-18 Women’s AfroBasket last year. Nigeria was initially set to make its debut in Chile when it finished second behind hosts Egypt in the 2010 FIBA Africa U-18 Championship for Women in Cairo but it ended up not participating.
In the 2025 championship, the Nigerian girls will begin their Group C campaign against China on July 12, while Portugal will face Canada the same day.
The Nigerians will meet Canada in their second game on Sunday, July 13 with China and Portugal slugging it out same day before all the teams take a day’s rest on Monday, July 14.
Nigeria’s last group game is against Portugal on July 15 and should they finish among the best two teams from Group C, they will move to the round of 16 slated for Wednesday, July 16.
Thursday, July 17 is rest day for the teams. According to FIBA, the quarterfinals and first classification matches will hold on July 18, just as the second set of classification games and the semifinals will be played on Saturday, July 19.
The final classification games to determine the teams for the 15th to the fifth positions will hold shortly before the third place and championship games on Sunday, July 20.
FIBA said that the group phase and round of 16 matches have not yet been assigned to a specific hall at the competition venue, the Starez Arena Vodova (Hall 1 or Hall 2, just as “the game order within each hall is still to be confirmed and will be announced later.”
