National B/Ball team earns ranking for the first time

The Guyana Amateur Basketball Federation Senior Men’s National Team has received a historic FIBA ranking for the first time in the nation’s history of the sport. Guyana is now ranked 110th out of 213 national teams. Guyana was never ranked before and was considered to be one of the unranked countries within FIBA for the past 56 years.
On October 11, FIBA officially launched the new FIBA World Ranking Men, presented by Nike. This is an innovative game – based wranking that factors in all official games ranging from regional pre-qualifiers all the way to the FIBA Basketball World Cup Final and includes the Olympic Basketball Tournament as well as the Continental Cups. As a result, it can more accurately reflect the performances of 153 national teams over an eight year period, compared to 91 national teams under the previous system which was competition – based and only took into account the final standings of tournaments.

The basic principle is simple: 1,000 basis points are awarded in each game, with the two teams earning a share of these according to the margin of victory or defeat. Weightings are added on a round basis meaning that, when a team progresses through a top official FIBA competition, its wins are worth more with every round it plays. The ranking has revised weightings of the competitions. For the first time, it sees the implementation of a time decay rewarding teams for their most recent performances. This replaces the system in place under the previous ranking, where all games over the 8-year period received the exact same value.
It also recognizes the value of away wins and rewards facing and beating opponents that are higher in the ranking. The new ranking was devised with the new calendar clearly in mind. FIBA is pleased to offer more national teams – 149 of them, a ranking that can be updated after every window of the Qualifiers so that national teams, fans and their national federations can follow their progress on a more regular basis.
For now, the new FIBA World Ranking Men, presented by Nike, only applies to senior men’s national teams and competitions. FIBA will work towards drawing up and implementing similar systems for the women’s and youth (boys and girls) rankings at a later stage.
Both GABF President Nigel Hinds and GABF International General Secretary and CBC Vice President Patrick Haynes are quite pleased that the National Senior Men’s Team was able to capture such a high worldwide ranking, and are very optimistic that the team will be ranked even higher, after next year’s FIBA AmeriCup Caribbean Pre-Qualifier which will be hosted by Suriname in June 2018. The Guyana Men’s National team was placed 5th in the 2014 CBC Championships in Tortola, BVI which was its best performance in this decade.
Caribbean countries ranked higher in the list includes: Puerto Rico (15), Dominican Republic (17), Virgin Islands (51), Bahamas (59), Cuba (60), Jamaica (68), Antigua and Barbuda (76), British Virgin Islands (92), Barbados (97), St. Vincent and the Grenadines (100), Bermuda (109), while Guyana (110) outranked Suriname (118), Cayman Islands (121) and Trinidad and Tobago (143). Now is the time that the Government of Guyana through the Ministry of Sport dedicate funding for the promotion and growth of basketball through-out the nation. The Nigel Hinds lead administration was able to source the required funds to get Guyana’s overseas athletes to these important qualifying championships which allowed them to be ranked for the first time ever in 56 years of Guyana basketball is a significant accomplishment.