FIBA speaks about status of Belize’s players…

The question of eligibility was discussed by Enrique Basulto, President of COCABA, in a News Five interview today in Cancun. Basulto spoke about the grounds for the disqualification of the Belize National Team from this tournament organized by COCABA.

Enrique Basulto, President COCABA (Translated from Spanish)
“The situation with Belize is that they turned in documents to FIBA America that had six players that needed to be revised by FIBA International. Based on this information, it was not clear whether they are players from Belize, by birth specifically. FIBA has a rule regarding nationalization, which states that each country can select one player with a questionable nationality status and that is what we told the Belizean team. There are no sanctions that will be put in place against Belize. This is just a matter of rules and procedures. Teams that play with players that FIBA has not approved, will play as part of invitational matches. They will not count officially for the tournament. We need to review the case of Belize. The federation needs to pay close attention to what has happened and work closely with the Central American organization so we could address these problems regarding documentation and the lack of organization by the federation. ”

Basulto says that Team Honduras has also been disqualified along the same lines as Team Belize. He says, however, that no sanctions will be taken against Belize but all games played by Belize will be merely treated as exhibition games.