Four teams from the Sahara Conference have booked their place in the Playoffs of the 2023 Basketball Africa League scheduled for Kigali, Rwanda in May.
Stade Malien of Mali, AS Douanes of Senegal, Rwanda Energy Group Basketball Club and Abidjan Basket Club all made it to the Playoffs.
REG had earlier confirmed their spot in the playoffs after three wins in their opening games.
It was initially believed that ABC and US Monastir had picked two of the three spots remaining but a dramatic outcome on the last day of the tournament threw the Sahara Conference open.
In the first game of the day, Stade Malien recorded a blow out win over ABC dropping the Abidjan team from first to fourth leaving their destiny to be decided by Monastir or AS Douanes.
As a result, the Malians joined REG who had already qualified leaving ABC, Monastir and AS Douanes to battle for the third and fourth spot.
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US Monastir needed to beat Douanes to seal their qualification or avoid a double digit defeat of over 10 points while ABC needed Monastir to win which throws Douanes out or they lose by 10 plus points which knocks out Monastir and they qualify.
In the last game of the day, the host caused an upset beating the defending champions US Monastir 76-60 in front of a raucous home crowd at the Dakar Arena.
The defeat eliminates Monastir out of the playoffs as they finished fifth on the standings while ABC moved to fourth and Douanes to second place.
According to the rules, If two or more teams in a conference have the same win-loss record across all games, the games between such two or more teams shall decide their respective rankings. If such two or more teams have the same win-loss record across the respective games between them, further criteria will be applied with the first one being a higher point differential.
With all teams on 3 wins and 2 defeats, the result from the games against Kwara Falcons who did not win a game was not used. The final standings was determined based on point difference from four games played between the five teams.
Final standings W L F A PD
Stade Malien 2 2 300 287 13
AS Douanes 2 2 275 263 12
REG 2 2 292 296 -4
ABC 2 2 310 314 -4
Monastir 2 2 296 313 -17
Image Credit: The BAL
