The 2023 BAL season, also known as BAL Season 3, is the third season of the Basketball Africa League (BAL). The season began on 11 March 2023 and will end on 27 May 2023, with the playoffs and finals being played in the

BK Arena BK Arena (formerly known as Kigali Arena until 2022) is an multi-purpose indoor arena in Kigali, Rwanda, used mostly for basketball and volleyball matches. Built and finished in 2019, it hosts sporting events and concerts. It is the biggest indoor ...

Kigali Kigali () is the Capital (political), capital and largest city of Rwanda. It is near the nation's geographic centre in a region of rolling hills, with a series of valleys and ridges joined by steep slopes. As a primate city, Kigali has been Rwa ...

, which hosts the finals for a third season in a row. The regular season is played in Dakar, Senegal (Sahara Conference) and Cairo, Egypt (Nile Conference) for a second year in a row. The qualification games for the season, the Road to BAL, began on 11 October 2022. The winners of the 2023 BAL season will automatically qualify for the 2023 FIBA Intercontinental Cup Singapore. US Monastir are the defending champions, having won their first title in the previous season.

Qualification

The first round of the qualifying stage consists of 20 teams that play in four groups of five, each held in different cities. In the Elite 16, the teams are joined by 6 teams that qualified during the previous 2022 BAL qualification. Two groups of five teams are played to determine the six teams that advance to the main tournament. On 21 September 2021, FIBA Africa announced the 26 teams in the qualifying tournaments as well as the six countries that would qualify directly.

East Division

Group phase

Elite 16

Final round

East Division

Group phase

Elite 16

Final round

Teams

Petro de Luanda Petro is a masculine given name, a surname and an Ancient Roman cognomen. It may refer to: Given name * Petro Balabuyev (1931-2007), Ukrainian airplane designer, engineer and professor, lead designer of many Antonov airplanes * Petro Doroshenko (1 ...

was the first team to qualify for the season when it won the

Angolan League The Angolan League ( pt, Liga Angolana) was a political movement working for the interest of the native population of Portuguese colonial Angola. The organization was founded in 1912, directly after the proclamation of the Portuguese republic. I ...

on 10 May 2022. The last qualifed team was City Oilers who captured the third place in the Road to BAL East Division on 27 November 2022. The twelve teams of the 2023 BAL season were officially confirmed on 13 February 2023. After an absence of a Nigerian representative in the 2022 season due to FIBA's punishment of the Nigeria Basketball Federation,

Kwara Falcons The Kwara Falcons are a Nigerian basketball team based in Ilorin, Kwara. The team plays in the Nigerian Premier League (basketball), Nigerian Premier League and has won one championship in 2022. Following their national championship, the Falcons a ...

was directly qualified as winners of the Nigerian Premier League. Al Ahly,

ABC Fighters Abidjan Basket Club Fighters, commonly known as ABC Fighters, is an Ivorian basketball club based in the city of Abidjan. Founded in 1997, the team is the most successful men teams in the country, with 19 national championships won, and one contine ...

and

Stade Malien Stade Malien is a Malian professional football and sports club based in Bamako. One of the two dominant clubs of Malian football, their eastern Bamako training grounds host other sports as well, including a successful basketball club. Football ...

will make their debut in the competition. ABC Fighters is the first team from

Ivory Coast Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire, officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital is Yamoussoukro, in the centre of the country, while its largest city and economic centre is ...

to play in the BAL, while City Oilers is the first team from Uganda. Two teams, defending champions US Monastir and runners-up Petro de Luanda, appear in their third consecutive season.

Personnel and sponsorship

Augustí Julbe Augustí Julbe Bosch (born 3 May 1972) is a Spanish basketball coach who currently serves as head coach for Al Ahly. Coaching career Born in Barcelona, Julbe started his coaching career with CB Cornellà as assistant in 1995. In December 2020, ...

of Al Ahly was the only coach this season to already have won a BAL championship, as he won the

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title with Zamalek.

Foreign and Elevate players

Each BAL team was allowed to have four foreign players on its roster, including only two non-African players. Players in ''italics'' were signed only for the playoffs. If players have multiple nationalities, the nationality of an African nation is shown. Each team also featured one player from the NBA Academy Africa, under the BAL Elevate program. The players were drafted in an online meeting by the teams and the official list were announced on 28 February 2023.

Pre-season

The league hosted their official second BAL Combine on 15 and 16 January 2023 at The One Ball Training Center in Paris. The combine featured 30 players and was directed by former

NBA The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United St ...

head coach Quin Snyder. US Monastir, as champions of the 2022 BAL season, participated in the 2023 FIBA Intercontinental Cup. It was the second time a BAL team participated in the FIBA Intercontinental Cup. In the competition, played in February and hosted in La Laguna in Spain, Monastir finished fourth after two losses against CB Canarias and Rio Grande Valley Vipers. '' ESPN'' tipped

, last year's runners-up, as the title favourites in their annual season preview.

Schedule

The schedule for the 2023 season was officially released on 13 February 2023.

Regular season

The regular season is played from 11 March to 6 May 2023. The twelve teams are divided into two conferences of six teams each. Teams in each group play each other one time, whereafter the top four teams advance to the playoffs.

Sahara Conference

The games of the Sahara Conference were played from 11 March to 21 March 2023 and were hosted in the

Dakar Arena The Dakar Arena (nicknamed Palais des sports de Diamniadio) is an indoor arena that is located in Diamniadio, Senegal. Built between 2016 and 2018, it is primarily used for basketball games, and it is the home arena of the Senegal national basket ...

in Dakar, Senegal for a second consecutive season.

finished as Conference winner, due to their head-to-head point difference that determined the ranking of five teams with a 3–2 record. The defending BAL champions, US Monastir, missed the playoffs after they lost on the last game day.

Nile Conference

The games of the Nile Conference will be played from 26 April to 6 May 2023 and will be played in the Hassan Moustafa Sports Hall in

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, Cairo, Egypt.

Standings

Games

---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----

Playoffs

The playoffs will be held from 21 May to 27 May 2023 in the

Rwanda Rwanda (; rw, u Rwanda ), officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator ...

for the third consecutive season.

Bracket

Quarterfinals

Semifinals

Third place game

Finals

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:2023, BAL season BAL 2022–23 in basketball leagues Basketball Africa League seasons