This year’s edition of the FIBA Women’s World Junior Championships will start in Brno on Saturday, 12 July, with 8 games, starting with Australia vs Mali at 11:15 am. Like the previous group phase of women’s Eurobasket, the entire competition will be hosted in the Starez Arena on Vodova. The Czech team will face Japan in the 6th game of the opening day at 5:30 pm.
The Czech under-19 team has qualified for the World Championship for the third time in a row. After their first game against Japan on Saturday, the Czech team will face Argentina on the following day, and group favorite Spain on Tuesday 15th. All of those games will start at 5:30 pm.
Although Japan and Spain are above the Czech Republic in the official power rankings, the Czech Republic’s group appears to be among the least challenging, as it doesn’t include the dreaded top 4: USA, France, Canada and Australia.
While every team will survive the group phase, they have an incentive to do well early on in order to face easier opponents in the later round. Being in group D, the Czech Republic will have to face opponents from group C once the second round starts, with the winner of each group meeting the country that placed last in the other, and so on.
As such, Viktor Prusa’s squad will have to finish in at least second place to avoid the most dangerous teams of group C, which are likely to be France and Australia.
Additional information and tickets are available on the event’s official website.
