BAL: Angola, Cameroon, DRC, Egypt, S. Africa and S. Sudan ready for Nile Conference

The Basketball Africa League (BAL) unveiled Tuesday the rosters of the six teams competing in the league’s Nile Conference group phase that will kick off April 9 at the Hassan Moustafa Indoor Sports Complex in Cairo (Egypt) and run through April 19.

The six teams – BC Espoir Fukash (Democratic Republic of the Congo), Cape Town Tigers (South Africa), Cobra Sport (South Sudan), FAP (Cameroon), Petro de Luanda (Angola) and Zamalek (Egypt) – collectively feature 78 players from 12 countries across the continent and the United States.

Defending BAL champion Zamalek of Egypt will take on South Sudan’s Cobra Sport in the Nile Conference opener on Saturday, April 9. 15 games will then take place in Cairo throughout the month. The top four teams from the Nile Conference will join the top four teams from the Sahara Conference – REG (Rwanda), US Monastir (Tunisia), AS Salé (Morocco) and S.L.A.C (Guinea) – in the 2022 BAL Playoffs, which will be held in Kigali, Rwanda, from May 21-28.

A spot for prospects

The Nile Conference features two former NBA players: Jamel Artis (Cape Town Tigers) who last played for the Orlando Magic and Ike Diogu (Zamalek) he last played for the San Antonio Spurs and won the 2015 FIBA AfroBasket championship as a member of the Nigeria men’s national team.

Each team will have up to 13 players, at least eight of whom are citizens of their respective team’s home country and up to four of whom are from other countries. Additionally, no team will feature more than two players from outside Africa. As part of the BAL Elevate program, the13th roster spot in all teams is reserved for a prospect from the NBA Academy Africa. The elite training center Senegal welcomes the top high-school age prospects from across Africa.