Puerto Rico will bring its best basket players to the women’s AmeriCup tournament

The goal set by the Basketball Federation of Puerto Rico (Fbpur) ahead of the tournament AmeriCup it is to achieve or improve the result they achieved in the 2021 edition, when they won silver.

To achieve this, the president of the FBPUR, Yum Ramos, aims to repeat the squad that saw action at the World Cup in Australia, “perhaps adding one or two pieces to it.”

“I think this is the first time that we are going to have all our star players together, which makes us an extremely dangerous and difficult team to beat,” said Ramos, who hopes there are no injuries.

The federation hopes that for Mexico there will be athletes like the escorts Jazmon Gwathmey, who did not play in the World Cup due to a shoulder injury; and Arella Guiranteswho just signed with the Storm de Seattle to formalize his return to the WNBA.

“The combination of Arella, Jazmon, Mya (Hollingshed), Tayra (Meléndez) and Pamela (Rosado) has never been able to play together, and this is what we expect for this tournament,” Ramos said.

Puerto Rico is part of Group B along with Canada, Dominican Republic, Mexico y Colombia. Group A is made up of Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, USA y Cuba.

The competition will take place from July 1 to 9 at the Dome of the León Fair, in Guanajuato, Mexico, and will award two places for the World Pre-Olympic for the Paris 2024 Games.

Ramos shared that the practices in Puerto Rico will begin on June 2, and that although they will not have official warm-ups, it is planned that the team will face university teams and in inter-squad matches. The team will leave on June 21 for El Salvador to compete in the Central American and Caribbean Games and from there they will travel to Mexico for the AmeriCup.

The Central American women’s basketball tournament is scheduled for June 23-28.

“Not all the teams that go to the Central Americans go to the AmeriCup. In Mexico some pieces are incorporated”Ramos said.

The federation president remarked that the goal of the Central Americans is to win gold. In the last edition of Barranquilla 2018, they won the bronze medal.

“For the Central Americans, some players who were in the World Cup and other young players that we want to see as Trinity San Antonio, that although it was in the World Cup, it has a lot of projection and we want to see it in some Central Americans. We also want to see other college players who can’t play in November when they’re Olympic qualifiers. We are going to make a hybrid”, explained Ramos.

For his part, the leader of the team Gerardo “Jerry” Batistarecognized the level of play of the 10 teams that will compete in the AmeriCup, so you cannot rest assured that it will be an easy tournament.

“Here there is no party that is easy. We can’t say we’re good because we have this first game. In the group of us they are all dangerous teams”, pointed out the technician.

Batista recalled that Mexico has the advantage of being played in their country, while Colombia has beaten Puerto Rico in the past and knows how to play against the Puerto Ricans. In the case of the Dominican Republic, it is expected that they will have good level basket players who were not in the Centrobasket which was held in November of last year. Canada -for its part- also has a good cast and has always exhibited a “big level”.

As for the other group, he stated that the United States, Brazil and Argentina are three powers. He added that Cuba has a renewed team “and very solid”like Venezuela, which is undergoing a renewal process.

“This is a very important tournament for us, not only to continue with the performance we have had in the Americas, but also to qualify us for the Pre-Olympic,” Batista stated.

The Puerto Ricans won their third consecutive gold medal in the 2022 Centrobasket. They also finished eighth in the FIBA ​​Basketball World Cup held last September in Australia. Likewise, they rose to tenth position in the FIBA ​​ranking after their World Cup performance and remained there in the February update of this year.