The Guyana Amateur Basketball Federation (GABF) executive committee will conduct a thorough tournament review and evaluation of the senior men’s team’s winless campaign in the recent FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023 Pre-Qualifiers in El Salvador.
This was confirmed by head-coach of the men’s team Junior Hercules during a brief interview with Stabroek Sport yesterday. According to Hercules, the review, which was initially scheduled to be held April 22nd, will occur shortly, as the report was submitted last evening to the membership of the GABF by the management team.
Hercules explained, “The submission of the report, it is scheduled for tonight (last evening). It will be done at an executive meeting which is expected to cover the tour, expenditure, the performance, management, it’s a full review of everything and things will emanate from the review. The manager’s report, coach’s report, essentially will be discussed.”
Guyana suffered four consecutive losses in the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023 Pre-Qualifiers to crash out of the tournament in the Central American nation. The Guyanese went down to Nicaragua (84-73), Jamaica (107-87), El Salvador (92-90) and Costa Rica (78-75) at the José Adolfo Pineda National Gymnasium.
According to Hercules, additional international exposure is needed for the team, especially the local players who can develop faster in that environment. He expounded, “Going forward more exposure is needed for the locally-based players. Once you identify a talent or two, you need to work with them. For example what will happen to Israel Yaw after this event? Especially at this juncture, he needs to be in an environment where he can grow, competition does that.”
Hercules further noted that a core of emerging players should be established locally that can be developed over a structured time period to add value to the national programme for the long term future.
“What I think that is necessary is that if you shortlist 23 of the best players in the country and work with them over a period of time like two years, you will get a better product and return on your investment and will also expand the national pool. We should have a junior national team with a core of 25 players who are knocking on the door of the senior team which you can pull from that batch,” he explained.
