BASKETBALL – BAHRAIN’S youth men’s basketball national team have begun their preparations for the Gulf Basketball Association (GBA) U18 Championship 2026, set 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, to be played in Ahmedabad, India from August 13 to 23.
Newly signed head coach Salman Ramadhan, one of the kingdom’s most respected basketball minds, is supervising the Bahrainis’ practices at Bahrain Basketball Association (BBA) Arena in Um Al Hassam Sports Complex.
BBA vice-president Salman Hubail and BBA board member Ahmed Kaldari visited their first session and spoke with Ramadhan, his staff, and the players.
Hubail and Kaldari reviewed the upcoming plans for the youth men’s squad ahead of the regional tiff, and stressed on the importance of working hard in the lead-up to the event to achieve the best levels of technical and physical preparedness.
Ramadhan had called up 19 of the kingdom’s best young talents for this preparation period, with the roster expected to be trimmed for the GBA tournament.
The squad list includes Somto Patrick Onoduenyi, Hassan Abdulkadir, Mujtaba Rayyan, Ali Ferdowsi, Mohammad Farhan, Mohammed Adel Hussain, Ali Khalil Mohammed, Ali Ayman Hamza, Ehsan Abdulreza Ali, Yousef Al Samaheeji, Mohammed Hameed Haider, Ali Sadeq Al Haddad, Hussain Fouad Moussa, Khaled Ali Hafez, Mahdi Habib Ahmed, Divine Tochukwu Abochi, Jock James, Hussain Madan, and Khaled Mohammed.
The GBA U18 Championship is expected to feature all six GCC nations.
The full list of participating youth national teams and the schedule of games have yet to be released by organisers.
The Fiba U18 Asia Cup 2026, meanwhile, will feature 16 countries from across the continent. 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 Asian competition.
In Ahmedabad, the field will be divided into four groups of four for the preliminary round, from which the top three teams in 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 stage 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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