D’Tigers of Nigeria Maintains their spot as the number one ranked African team in the World of Basketball despite their recent poor performance which saw them almost missing out on 2023 FIBA World Cup.
Nigeria move two places up to 19th in the World rankings despite losing two games against Ivory Coast and Angola in the last windows of qualifiers.
The 2021 continental champions Tunisia follow Nigeria as the second ranked team Africa as they rose seven spots to 20th as they went 3-3 in the windows with wins over Cameroon, Rwanda and Congo DR. The continent’s youngest high flyer South Sudan also made the biggest leap in the ranking, using wins over Rwanda, Tunisia, Cameroon, Congo DR and Egypt to offset a defeat against Senegal and rise 11 spots to 64th.
Olympic champion United States is still ranked at No. 1, closely followed by Spain, who surprised many by claiming gold at the EuroBasket 2022 to push to 758.9 points – up from 724 points, Australia is at No. 3 worldwide and No. 1 in Asia.
Argentina and France wrap up the top five in the world rankings.
The number one spot will be at stake during the last two windows of the FIBA World Cup 2023 Qualifiers. The USA falling out of the top spot has never happened before since the inception of the FIBA World Ranking.
The FIBA AfroBasket 2021 was already included in the last rankings so the latest edition adds only results from the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023 African Qualifiers.