Cape Verde: Islanders have big hearts!
When Cape Verde's Tony Barros crushed Egypt with a buzzer-beating three-pointer to capture the bronze medal at the 2007 FIBA Africa Championship, a new nation was born in African sport! All over the islands, the medal was cause for celebration. Not only did Barros, who was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Cape Verdean parents, put the country on the podium. He gave Cape Verde a chance to reach the Beijing Games via the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Athens. It has been, rest assured, a major topic of conversation in Cape Verde ever since.
Cape Verde is an archipelago of 10 islands, located 620 kilometres off the coast of Senegal. The country, which has close to 500,000 inhabitants, was a colony of Portugal but gained independence in 1975. The National Team, which is known as the Criololos, first qualified for the FIBA Africa Championship in 1997, when the event was staged in Dakar, Senegal. After a second participation in the event in1999 in Angola, where they claimed three wins and a ninth-place finish, Cape Verde failed to qualify for the final round of the African Championship in 2001, 2003 and 2005. In 2007, Cape Verde benefitted from the expansion of the event to 16 teams. They began with an overtime win against Morocco. Cape Verde built momentum and claimed a quarter-final triumph over giants Nigeria - a team that reached the last 16 of the FIBA World Championship in Japan the year before. They would go on to win the bronze medal, something that brought smiles to the faces of everyone, including Claude Constantino, a basketball legend of Senegal who originates from Cape Verde. Constantino, who played for the Senegalese at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico, is the president of the African Coaches Association. When he played the game, he wasn't able to turn out for Cape Verde as it was still a colony of Portugal.
The people of Cape Verde have moved all over the world, but primarily to Portugal, the east coast of the United States (mainly the Boston area) and Angola. So it's not surprising that players come from all of those places, and Cape Verde itself.
Not many people will bes giving Cape Verde much of a chance to make an impact at the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Athens, but that was also the case last year in Angola when they shocked Africa by winning the bronze. They take on a New Zealand team that is in rebuilding mode in Group B, as well as a Germany squad that is without two key players in Johannes Herber and Mithat Demirel. Their short preparations for the Athens tournament, which tips off on July 14, will be begin on June 23 in Praia, the capital city located on Santiago Island. Eric Silva, an assistant last summer to Emmanuel Trovoada, has taken the reins because Trovoada will be in Portugal following the birth of his child. He is extremely optimistic. "To be honest, with this group of players I have, I am able to say that if Dirk Nowitzki misses the tournament, we may have a chance against Germany," he said. "I will make my players aware that they are capable of fighting neck-a-neck with Germany. Definitely, New Zealand is a team within our reach. We are a very competitive team that will be in Athens to qualify for Beijing. I continue to believe that any team in this tournament has the same chance to qualify." For Cape Verde it will be the first international event they have played in, and one that is much more difficult than the 2006 Lusofonian Games in Macao - a competition for Portuguese-speaking countries. There, Cape Verde also won the bronze medal.
How did they qualify?
2007 FIBA Africa Championship, Final Round
Bronze Medal (5 W - 1 L)
Results
Preliminary Round
Aug-17th 2007
Cape Verde b Morocco 86-80 OT
Aug-18th 2007
Angola b Cape Verde 100-44
Aug-19th 2007
Cape Verde b Rwanda 71-62
Quarter Final
Aug-21st 2007
Cape Verde b Nigeria 63-62
Semi-final
Aug-23rd 2007
Angola b Cape Verde 93-60
Classification 3rd-4th
Aug-24th 2007
Cape Verde b Egypt 53-51
