The Ukrainian national team will play in the second round of the 2027 World Cup pre-qualification in August
Ainars Bagatskis, photo – fiba.basketball
Head coach of the Ukrainian national basketball team Ainars Bagatskis commented on the results of the draw for the second round of pre-qualification for the 2027 Basketball World Championship .
“Slovakia is a team that is very dependent on big man Vladimir Brodzyansky, who plays in Spain. With and without him, they are two different teams. They have character and know how to play the end of games. Switzerland is an experienced team that knows how to play basketball. It is difficult for me to say anything more detailed about these opponents, we need to better understand their rosters, but everyone in Europe knows how to play basketball, we already know that.”
“We shouldn't think that we'll come and win these games easily, we need to prepare better for them. We need to make progress through these games and show quality basketball.”
“We will start our preparations at the beginning of July and will prepare for about a month. It is too early to talk about any specifics regarding the players and their number who will be at this summer training camp. I still need time.”
The Ukrainian team was selected from the first basket in the draw. The blue-yellows ended up in Group A with the teams of Slovakia and Switzerland.
The matches of this stage will be played from 2 to 20 August. The top two teams from each group will advance to the main qualification of the World Cup, the first stage of which will begin in November 2025.
Let us recall that the Ukrainian national team recently completed the selection for EuroBasket 2025. It was a failure for the team, which during the cycle was taken over by Ainars Bagatskis, who replaced Vitaliy Stepanovskyi as head coach. The blue-yellows lost their chances to reach the next stage early, losing five out of five matches, but managed to slam the door, beating Portugal away in the last round.
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