Basketball team to camp in Germany

THE national men’s basketball team is expected to leave for Hamburg, Germany, today for a week-long camp ahead of the Afro-basket championships in Tunisia. The championships will run from August 19 to 30. The Zimbabwean side is made up of 14 players and has been together since last month preparing for the continental event under the guidance of coach, Ellery Pinkerton.

They will be in Germany until August 16 as part of their preparations and will head to Tunisia on August 17.

Basketball Union of Zimbabwe president, Addison Chiware, who is the head of delegation, is hopeful the camp will go a long way in preparing the team for the championships.

“We’re leaving tomorrow(today) evening. We leave Germany on the 17th for Tunisia and the competition starts on August 19 up to the 30th.

“We’re going to be playing matches with teams in the Hamburg Basketball Association. It’ll also benefit our technical side.

“We’ve got ex-national team players who played at the highest level and are now in the technical department so they’re going to impart knowledge and technical aspects to our coaches.

“We’re going to, at least, play four games, from the 9th to the 16th, so it’s for a week. We’ll be using the latest equipment plus playing extremely competitive matches,” said Chiware.

Zimbabwe will be competing at the continent’s prestigious tournament for the first time.

“We’re looking at personal goals, what we want for them (the players) is to set personal milestones for individuals as you know basketball is a statistics game.

“Our second goal, we want to be a better ranked team when we come out of Tunisia, that means if we can make it to the second round it’s okay.

“We know the task ahead of us is a mammoth task. We’ll play teams that have been there 15 times and are more professional than us but we want to do our best to come out a better ranked team,” said Chiware.

Zimbabwe are in Group D with Cote d’Ivoire, Algeria and Cape Verde.