Italy U16 European Championships

Italy the hosts of the Eurobasket 2007 have a chance to test the facilities next week when they stage the Termosteps U16 European Championship Women Division B in Chieti. While this is the 19th edition of this competition in this age group, the Division B championship is only in its forth year.

16 nations will fight it out over ten days to win the two tickets for promotion to Division A. The sixteen teams are split into four groups of four teams. The first three teams in each group qualify for the qualifying round. The last team of each group will play in the 13th – 16th place classification games.

The qualifying round is made up of 2 groups of six teams, the teams from group “A/B” in one group and “C/D” in the other group. The results of the games between the teams from the same group in the preliminary round will be taken into account when establishing the ranking.

After the qualifying round the format of the competition basically switches to a knock out format. The first two teams from each of group play of in the 1st – 4th place classification with the winners of the semi-final gaining promotion to Division A for next season.

The 3rd and 4th placed team from each group plays in the 5th – 8th place classifications and the last two teams in each group playoff in the 9th –12th place.

This makes a total of eight games per team in ten days

The teams that finished bottom of their groups during the Preliminary phase take part in a round robin competition for places 13th – 16th.

Group A: Finland, Italy, Montenegro, Slovenia
Group B: Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Moldavia, Portugal
Group C: Bulgaria, England, Ireland, Netherlands
Group D: Armenia, Germany, Israel, Romania

All the matches will be played in two locations in Chieti:

Palasport Santa Filomena
Palasport Colle dell'Ara