Belize’s Basketball Team plays in spite of disqualification

Today the Belize National Basketball Team, dubbed Belizean Heritage by the Association, continued its winning ways by demolishing Guatemala by a score of one hundred to sixty-four, the second thirty plus victory in as many days. Yesterday Belizean Heritage destroyed the Nicaraguans with a score of ninety-eight to sixty-seven. The morning after the thirty-one point victory, the first and big win did not have the celebration that it ought to have. The team status, however, is still up in the air as the team was disqualified and removed from the FIBA website. No statistics were ever posted online of Belize’s first game. FIBA, it turns out, was still in the process of making a ruling and Co-host William Neal and I of Open Your Eyes spoke to the players this morning in Cancun when they found out that some of the players were not eligible to play.

Milton Palacio, Belizean Heritage
“They’re saying five of us can play and the five that can play is myself, Clinton Fuller, Alex Carcamo, Ritchie and then we can use one alternate with the new guys that came and they’re saying that they don’t have any Belizean blood in them and they’re just getting a passport and we were just given passports, which to me is just terrible. It’s unfair to us because we’ve been in Belize three weeks working and playing and now we have to come out here to this and how can you say now that we don’t have the papers and we don’t have any legalization and all these players were coming illegal? Like I said, we hear they’re scared of us and they want I guess, to me, I think they want Mexico and those other teams as powerhouses to advance and I think seeing our game yesterday, they know that we’re not a joke and we’re coming to play hard and we’re coming to win. So the words I wanna say, I can’t really say but me personally, I think we’re gonna play it out and they gotta explain to the people of Belize what happen.”

Daren Bovell, Assistant Coach
“Milton Palacio and Alex Carcamo has the same status as the other seven players that they are not allowing to play. So we do not know exactly what is going on with the papers or who is making the decisions because we have seen some papers that they have presented but nothing really concrete from FIBA. The papers that they showed me, personally, it was a computer printed paper with some asterisk beside and no signature from FIBA, no person’s name, no FIBA letterhead or anything.”

Milton Palacio
“Everybody’s on the same page. First we were like let the five play and then we pick one alternate or whatever. I said no, we’re not gonna do that. Either we’re all not playing or we all gonna play but I say right now we all play. Like I said, let them deal with the bogus that they’re trying to do and sending letters like we don’t have our paperwork together or like we’re stupid. Come on, try something else.”

Alex Carcamo
“We came pretty stacked to this tournament and we’re just gonna go out no matter what the controversy is and just keep playing. I mean pretty much what it is, is teams are scared of us right now. They’ve seen that we bring our A squad and they’re nervous. Yesterday, I think had we won maybe by ten or five points, we wouldn’t be still getting all this controversy but after we put a beating on them last night everybody’s worried about Belize now.”

Daren Bovell
“They started to question the constitution of Belize, they start to say things like all the players that were born before 1981, they’re not sure if they qualify to play under that constitution because Belize was not Belize before 1981. So it’s a very big thing and I think it’s a very serious issue.”

Milton Palacio
“I think the government should definitely get behind us. I think that everybody involved, everybody in the ministry can get involved and send in letters or calling and I think they were supposed to have a meeting with Mr. Dean Barrow this morning and I think that everybody should be supportive because we have a really good team and I think that this is something that we can really build on and go forward and just being proud Belizeans and being proud of us and you know how we can really make a change. I think everybody should just keep supporting us and whoever can get involved back home with the ministries and Mr. Dean Barrow, he can call and make something happen I think that he should because I think, we as a team we’re not giving up right now; we wanna play.”