FIBA World Cup 2019: Previewing Group A

Cote D’Ivoire (Ivory Coast)

FIBA World Rank: 64

NBA Connections: While Ivory Coast does not boast any current NBA players, they do have a player who will be familiar to many American fans. Deon Thompson was born in California to Ivorian parents and played college basketball at the University of North Carolina under Roy Williams, where he set the record (since broken) for most games played in a collegiate career. The 6’8.5″ power forward will be making his first official tournament appearance for Cote D’Ivoire at the World Cup.

Name to Know: Vafessa Fofana is the starting small forward for the team and can fill up the scoreboard quickly. Fofana plays professionally in France for Nantes and has been a steadying presence for Ivory Coast. In a do-or-die game against South Africa in World Cup qualifying he had a team-high 21 points on 7-of-10 shooting to push them to the needed win.

FIBA History: This will be the Ivory Coast’s fourth FIBA World Cup appearance and first since 2010. It was in Turkey in 2010 that the team notched its first win in World Cup history over Puerto Rico, but it was not enough to advance to the knockout stage. The current generation of Ivory Coast players is the best since the country’s heyday in the mid 1980s.

Outlook: This is not a powerhouse team rolling into the World Cup as favorites, but they were certainly placed in an advantageous group. None of the other three teams — China, Poland or Venezuela — is ranked higher than 20th. In qualifying the Ivory Coast barely snuck in, but they did so by winning three consecutive games by a combined margin of 73 points. At the very least this team has a good shot to double their nation’s World Cup win total.