SEABA 2009: SouthEast Asia Basketball Championships

The 8th annual SEABA championships will be played this coming weekend (June 6-10, 200) in Medan, Indonesia.

SEABA, the SouthEast Asian Basketball Association,  is a sub-region of FIBA Asia that includes these ten Southeast Asian countries; Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

These ten national teams will compete for the gold medal.

The tournament winner will automatically earn a berth into the 2009 FIBA Asia Championships being held in August 2009.

The Republic of the Philippines has dominated this tournament in its seven-year history, winning five of the possible seven gold medals including the last SEABA championship held in 2007.

It is very likely that the Philippines would be seeking their seventh consecutive title this year had it not been for a FIBA-mandated suspension in 2005.

The Philippines have brought home the first place trophy in 1998, 1999, 2001, 2003, and 2007, while the Malaysian National Team has won the gold the remaining two tournaments (1994, 2005).

SEABA is just one of five subzones in FIBA Asia Region - the other zones include East Asia, Gulf, Middle Asia, and West Asia.  SEABA has inspired the ASEAN basketball league, a proposed league solely made up of Southeast Asian teams set to commence late-2009.

For more information you can visit FibaAsia.net.

(source: interbasket.net)