On Tuesday, FIBA Europe published an article on Kosovo, more specifically about the challenges that our NT’s will be facing in FIBA official competitions. KBF will compete with 6 NT’s in FIBA official competitions, 4 male and 2 female.
“Kosovo made its debut in the European basketball landscape last summer, playing in two FIBA European youth championships. Now the Federation is ready to embark on an even bigger journey by competing in the FIBA EuroBasket 2017 Qualifiers - the first senior national team competition in the country's history.
"We strive to prove to the global basketball community that we are a basketball-loving nation," said Arben Fetahu, a member of the Kosovo Basketball Federation Board.
"We've embarked on this journey with great motivation, and we're convinced that the end result of this classification cycle will be positive. We will be good hosts, we will play qualitative basketball and we will establish ourselves as a notable basketball nation on the European map."
Kosovo, who were only granted FIBA affiliation in March 2015, presented themselves to the basketball world last summer, taking part in the 2015 FIBA U16 European Championship Division C and the 2015 FIBA U20 European Championship Division B.
Kosovo collected their first-ever FIBA victory on July 6 at the U16 Division C tournament, beating Gibraltar 84-27. Victories over Monaco, Wales and Malta followed before losing to home team San Marino in the final to end their first-ever tournament in second place.
One day after the U16 team played in the Division C final, Kosovo's U20 team made history with their first victory at the Division B tournament, knocking off Georgia 77-65 in the final game of First Round Group B play.
Kosovo added an 81-69 victory over Romania in the Classification Round 9-18 and ended up finishing the tournament in 14th place - ahead of Austria, Albania, Romania and Moldova.
This was followed up by Sigal Prishtina debuting in the FIBA Europe Cup Regular Season, with a team consisting predominantly of Kosovo players.
This summer, Kosovo will play in Division B at the 2016 FIBA U16 European Championship and 2016 FIBA U20 European Championship and will send a team to Division C at the 2016 FIBA U18 European Championship.
After that, the Kosovar men's senior national team will make its debut this summer as they have been drawn into FIBA EuroBasket 2017 Qualifiers Group E with Slovenia, Ukraine and Bulgaria.
"For our national team there was no easy group in this qualification round. Therefore, we knew that we were to face strong opponents. We will make every effort to consolidate our national team, comprising of Kosovar players playing in the domestic league and around the world, in order to present ourselves as a worthy team against the European superpowers in our group," Fetahu said.
The KBF board member called Slovenia the favourite in the group and said Kosovo basketball officials use Slovenia as an example.
"Slovenia has invested a lot of effort and resources in systematically developing its basketball, traditionally an advanced sport in the country. And we look up to them for examples in our work in many aspects, including their work with youth national teams," he said.
Fetahu said Ukraine's presence the past three EuroBaskets - including a sixth-place finish in 2013 - shows they will be a difficult foe as well.
"We believe that their results in past EuroBasket competitions are no coincidence, rather a result of the good work and long tradition in the country," he said.
And Bulgaria demonstrated their appetite for EuroBasket qualification by placing Sharon Drucker at the helm of their national team, Fetahu said.
"If Bulgaria manages to gather its best national team, they could cause problems to any other team in this qualification round," he added.
Fetahu said the country cannot wait to finally see its national team - which will play three times at home between 31 August and 17 September.
"The greatest anticipation among basketball-lovers in the country is to see the skeleton of its national team, being that, according to the last census over a third of Kosovo's population lives abroad," he said.
"We are aware that we are facing real powers of European basketball, but we are confident that we will give our best to defend our national team colours in every game we play."