European Prospects

This weekend have been played the first qualification games for the German Youth Leagues. Both the NBBL U19 and the JBBL U16 leagues have more teams wanting to compete than open spots so that every summer a qualification tournament to fill the open spots is played.

In the NBBL, twelve teams competed for four spots for the 2010-2011 season. This Sunday has been played a first of two qualification rounds and eight of the twelve teams are still in the race. Köln 99ers and Junior Team Düsseldorf qualified in the West group by eliminating the Artland Junior Dragons. In the Mitte group, BC Wiesbaden and BIS Baskets Speyer had not much of a problem to eliminate Karlsruhe. For the East group, the teams of Würzburg and Cybex Bayreuth qualified for the next round by beating Charlottenburg while the Young Tigers Tübingen and München Ost are in the next round after dominating Freiburg in the South group.

In the next Qualification phase which will be played on the 26th and 27th June, the first group will feature Köln, Düsseldorf, Wiesbaden and Speyer while the second group is composed of Würzburg, Bayreuth, Tübingen and München. The qualifications will be played in a “league” format with every team meeting each other once. The first two teams in the standings of each group will qualify for the NBBL  season 2010/2011. It would be a good opportunity for teams like Köln or Speyer to come back to the NBBL after a year of absence.

In the JBBL qualifications, the following eight teams have qualified for the season 2010/2011: BG Suchsdorf Kronhagen, Team Hannover, Phoenix Hagen Youngsters, Team Göttingen, Grünbau Hanau Junior White Wings, Würzburg Baskets e.V., TSV Nördlingen and Team Basket München Nord. Congratulations to all the teams and good luck for the JBBL season.

You can follow all NBBL and JBBL news and games with stats on the official website: www.nbbl-basketball.de

Other news of the last weeks in the NBBL have been some coaching changes. Thomas Glasauer will take over the job of the double Top4 participant Paderborn Baskets as the previous head coach Artur Gacaev took over the head coaching job of the professional team in Paderborn. Glasauer was the coach of the NBBL team of Oldenburg during 5 years. The job in Oldenburg has been taken over by Mladen Drijencic who is also active as assistant coach of the German U18 National Team. ALBA Berlin has lost its NBBL head coach Hernik Rödl, as the former North Carolina Tar Heel has accepted a job as head coach with the Bundesliga team of TBB Trier a few weeks ago. Currently, no new head coach for the current vice-champions has been named.