Puerto Rico National Basketball Team will have a direct pass to the Olympic Repechage semifinals

The pre-Olympic tournament of World Repechage from FIBA which will start tomorrow Tuesday in Belgrade, Serbia, will start lame since the Senegal national team, which was to be Puerto Rico’s first rival in the tournament this Tuesday, will not arrive to compete in the tournament due to several of its players have tested positive for COVID-19.

At the time of this writing, according to reports from the leader of the National Basketball Team boricua Eddie Casiano, Senegal’s withdrawal represented a guarantee that Puerto Rico will have a place in one of the semifinal phase matches of the championship, although before they will have to play a match against Italy on Thursday to determine if they cross against the best or the second best in the Group A of the event, where the powerful team of Serbia and the pairs of Puerto Rico compete, competitively speaking, the teams of the Dominican Republic and the Philippines.

Lic. Yum Ramos confirmed being late that FIBA ​​has already notified Senegal’s withdrawal due to coronavirus-related matters. Before writing it was a mystery that happened with the Senegalese team because they had not reached Serbia and there was not much information about them on the networks and on specialized pages.

On Twitter there was a post on June 23 in which the Senegal Basketball Federation gave a report on the team’s preparation for the tournament. In it, they highlighted already being with their full payroll and planning to hold a friendly match in Germany for the tournament.

“The Senegalese team trained on Wednesday. The group is now complete. Senegal faces Germany this Thursday June 4 in Frankfurt, in a preparation match for the #TQO scheduled from June 29 to July 4 in Belgrade ”, reads the profile post @FSBBOBOFFICIEL.

But already today the Minister of Sports of Senegal issued a statement confirming four positive cases for COVID-19, which forced the team not to attend the tournament.