2012 FIBA U17
World Championship for Women

The second U17 FIBA World Championship for Women will be held in Amsterdam from 17 to 26 August 2012.

France hosted the 2010 edition and won the silver medal behind the USA but failed to qualify this time around after finishing 7th during the 2011 U16 European Championship for Women Division A.

The hosts, the Netherlands have become one of the leading European nations in women's youth basketball in the last three years with their promotion to Division A in all three European age groups. In the last U18 championship (2012), the Netherlands finished 4th and have qualified for the 2013 edition of the U19 World Championship.

Originally Rotterdam and Amsterdam were chosen as the host cities but due to some logistic issues, Rotterdam was dropped and now all the games will be played at the home of CTO Amsterdam.

While France are not returning, the defending champions, the USA will be back. The USA currently hold all the women world titles (U17, U19 and the senior) so they will start as favourites for this competition.

The qualification format for the World Championship remains the same with 11 teams having passed through their international basketball federation zone U16 championships in 2011. Only the host nation is guaranteed a place. For Africa and Oceania only the champions qualify while the other zones have multiple representatives.

Twelve countries from the five zones have qualified for the second edition of this championship: Australia, Brazil, Belgium, Canada, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mali, Netherlands, Spain, Turkey and USA.

The twelve teams have been split into two groups of six teams and the first four teams from each group qualify for the quarter-finals while the remaining four teams play in the 9th - 12th place qualification round.

The teams eliminated during the quarter-finals will play in the 5th-8th classification games.

The groups are as follows:

Group A: Belgium, Canada, Italy, Korea, Mali, USA

Group B: Australia, Brazil, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Turkey

A number of players in action during the U16 European Championship and the U18 European Championship earlier this summer will be also making an appearance in this competition.

Our colleagues from basketfeminin.com and masbasket.com will be covering the whole event live.