Game On for season two of the Basketball Africa League
The league has been expected to 38 games with 12 club teams from 12 African countries competing for top honours over nearly three months culminating in the finals in Kigali.
Basketball
Defending champions Zamalek headline the second season of an expanded Basketball Africa League (BAL) which starts on March 5 in the Senegalese capital Dakar.
The 12 club teams from 12 African nations will play in an expanded 38 games across three cities, from March through to May 28.
The new professional league, which was successfully launched last year, is a partnership between the International Basketball Federation, FIBA, and the NBA drawing together 12 national league champions.
Who are the 12 teams competing in 2022 BAL?
After last year's inaugural BAL Championship, excitement is building for the longer edition with matches taking place in Cairo, Dakar and Kigali.
Egyptian giants Zamalek defeated US Monastir of Tunisia 76-63 to take the title at the Kigali Arena.
Both finalists are back this year with FAP of Cameroon, AS Sale from Morocco and Angola’s Petro de Luanda the other three teams returning from the first BAL season.
Seven new teams - DUC from Senegal, BS Espoir Fukash from DR Congo, South Africa’s Cape Town Tigers, Ferroviario de Beira of Mozambique, South Sudan’s Cobra Sport, Rwanda Energy Group and Guinea’s Seydou Legacy Athletique - will join them in 2022.
The entrants from Angola, Egypt, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal and Tunisia qualified automatically by winning their national titles.
The remaining six teams were selected for the 2022 BAL season through the BAL qualifying tournaments under the FIBA Regional zones between October and December 2021.
“We are thrilled to welcome seven new teams and four new countries into the second season of the BAL,” said BAL President Amadou Gallo Fall who shared the League's long term plan to develop basketball in Africa with Olympics.com.
“Defending Champion Zamalek will anchor the five returning teams, after representing the BAL in the FIBA Intercontinental Cup this month in Cairo.
"The competition to bring home the 2022 BAL Championship Trophy is heating up, and we are excited that more fans will have an opportunity to watch the games live in three world-class African cities.
Zamalek, who also had the League’s first MVP, Puerto Rican Walter Hodge, will be hoping to build on their participation at the Intercontinental Cup which is being hosted in Africa for the first time ever.
The new Basketball Africa League format
For the 2022 season, the 12 teams will compete in two conferences.
The Sahara Conference teams will play their group phase matches at the Dakar Arena, one of the venues earmarked for the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games, while games in the Nile Conference will be staged at the Hassan Mostafa Indoor Sports Complex in Cairo.
The 15-game group phase in Dakar is scheduled from March 5-15 while Cairo will host teams from April 9-19.
The top four clubs from each conference then qualify for the BAL playoffs in Rwanda's Kigali Arena from 21-28 May.
It is 'must-win' basketball in Kigali with the eight teams playing in one-off quarter-finals before the semis and then a third-place playoff and the final.