Aside from South Sudan, which has shocked the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023 on its way to claiming an Olympic ticket, there’s another African nation that made some noise.
Egypt, ranked 55th entering the sport’s biggest stage, won two of its last three matches to emerge as the 20th team in the 32-team field.
The Pharaohs came close to securing the 2024 Paris Olympics ticket, but the Bright Stars, who finished 17th, defeated Angola by a significant margin on Saturday to claim it.
As the second-best African squad in the tournament, Egypt clinched a spot in the 24-team Olympic Qualifying Tournament.
“Obviously, we wanted to win two or three games here, but you know we had a chance to go to the Olympics,” said Pharaohs head coach Roy Rana after their final game in the World Cup, an 88-86 loss to New Zealand.
“If anybody had said that before the tournament started, they would have said, ‘You’re crazy, you have no chance, you’d be lucky to win a game,'” he added, as Egypt finished with a 2-3 record, defeating Mexico by 28 and Jordan by 16.
TURNAROUND
Rana, a Canadian coach who has handled his country’s age-group national teams numerous times, was appointed head tactician of the Pharaohs in January 2022.
Before that, Egypt had an underwhelming performance in the AfroBasket 2021, losing to underdogs Guinea in the pool play before bowing to Angola in the Round of 16.
They finished 11th in the tournament, a disappointing result for a team with a lot of potential.
Insert Rana into the picture.
Rana shared that they offered three main factors to turn around Egypt’s basketball fortunes a year and a half ago.
Identity, system, and mental toughness.
“I think the key for us was mental. Something that I challenged the group on right from the beginning. We weren’t the most confident group, we weren’t the most disciplined group. Mentally, at times, we would unravel at ourselves, and that was the constant theme,” said Rana about the team he inherited.
“We talked about it a lot, we tried to work on the mental side, we tried to let them understand what excellence looks like, what winning teams look like at the highest level, and they were great. They just listened and they tried their best, and that’s why today we were a little bit undisciplined in the biggest moments, but that’s growth as well,” he added.
“We’ll grow from it, and obviously, having a clear system of what we’re trying to do and trying to really develop a clear identity so those three things: identity, system, and working on the mental side. I think it really helped.”
In their first two games of the tournament against European powers Lithuania and Montenegro, the Pharaohs showed their promise, their potential.
They displayed glimpses of beauty, moments of the future, before crumbling and losing by big margins to the much higher-ranked nations.
Those moments turned into full games of impressive basketball as they demolished 31st-ranked Mexico, 100-72, and 33rd-ranked Jordan, 85-69.
Against the Tall Blacks, Egypt fought back from 12 down in the fourth quarter, with Amr El Gendy just missing the potential game-winner from deep with four seconds left in the match.
To exhibit mental toughness in those games, to execute the system, and to showcase their identity, Rana could not be prouder of his team.
“Listen, we had stretches against Lithuania where we were competitive, I felt we had long stretches against Montenegro where we were competitive, and then we started to roll a little bit,” said Rana.
“For us, just being in this situation I think is a huge step for the country and for our players,” he continued.
Egypt is also the fourth-youngest team in the tournament with an average age of 26.3. Only the USA, Finland, and Angola have younger squads.
And Rana is thrilled that there are even more Egyptian players who are making strides of their own in the US NCAA that could join the national team years from now.
“We made some great strides quickly, and you know we have a lot of players out there, we have more talent, we have young talent, we have to develop the talent that we have,” said Rana, who also coaches Kyoto in the B.League.
“We’ve got to make sure that the veteran players that we have continue to grow, and if we can bring back this group or a stronger group, it’s an exciting time for Egyptian basketball.”
