BASKETBALL – Bahrain have named a talented 19-player youth men’s basketball national team that will begin gearing up for the Gulf Basketball Association (GBA) U18 Championship, to be held in Doha, Qatar from July 17 to 22.
The event will also act as a qualifier for the Fiba U18 Asia Cup 2026, with the three nations climbing the podium earning their places in the biennial continental event, which will be played in Ahmedabad, India from August 13 to 23.
Meanwhile, former senior men’s basketball national team head coach Salman Ramadhan has been named to guide the kingdom’s youth men’s squad in the tournament.
Ramadhan is one of Bahrain’s most experienced tacticians and is highly regarded in the regional basketball scene.
This past season in the kingdom, Ramadhan helped guide Manama to the finals of both the Zain Bahrain Basketball League and the Khalifa Bin Salman Cup.
The Bahrain Basketball Association (BBA) made the announcements ahead of the start of their preparations on Monday next week.
The players called up for international duty are from Manama, Al Ahli, Muharraq, Al Najma, Nuwaidrat and Samaheej, while their two star big men Somto Patrick Onoduenyi and Hassan Abdulkadir were over the past several months student-athletes in the US.
From Manama, selected for the youth men’s team were Mujtaba Rayyan, Ali Ferdowsi, Mohammad Farhan, Mohammed Adel Hussain, Ali Khalil Mohammed, Ali Ayman Hamza, and Ehsan Abdulreza Ali.
From Ahli were Yousef Al Samaheeji, Mohammed Hameed Haider, Ali Sadeq Al Haddad, and Hussain Fouad Moussa.
From Muharraq were Khaled Ali Hafez and Mahdi Habib Ahmed, while from Najma were Divine Tochukwu Abochi and Jock James.
Completing the roster were Hussain Madan from Nuwaidrat and Khaled Mohammed from Samaheej.
Along with Ramadhan’s appointment as the new youth men’s national team head coach, the BBA selected former Manama Club stars Ahmed Abdulaziz and Omran Abdulredha as his two assistant coaches.
The GBA U18 Championship is expected to feature squads from all six GCC nations.
The U18 Asia Cup 2026 will feature 16 nations.
Bahrain will be looking to claim their place for the seventh time – with their last appearance in the 2018 edition in Thailand.
The nationals were bronze-medallists from the previous GBA U18 qualification event in 2024, but missed out on a place in the continental competition.
In Ahmedabad, the field will be divided into four groups of four for the preliminary round, from which the top three teams from each pool will advance to the knockout stage.
The four top seeds will each earn automatic berths in the quarter-finals, while the second and third-ranked squads will compete in a play-off round to fill the four remaining berths.
The best four teams from the Fiba U18 Asia Cup 2026 will then represent the continent at the Fiba U19 Basketball World Cup 2027, to be played in Pardubice, Czechia from June 26 to July 4 next year.
patrick@gdnmedia.bh
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