2012 FIBA Europe U20
European Championship for Women

For the first time the FIBA Europe U20 European Championship for Women Division A is being hosted by a federation not participating.

Hungary who are the co-hosts for the EuroBasket Women 2015 will present this competition in Debrecen despite the fact their team is taking part in the Division B championship.

The Czech Republic are hosting the B championship in Klatovy which will be run at the same time from 16 until 26 August 2012.

The competition format for Division A is exactly the same as the U16 and U18 competitions:

The teams are split into four groups of four teams. At the end of the preliminary round the top three teams per group move to the qualifying round.

Group A: Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Spain

Group B: Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Sweden

Group C: France, Portugal, Turkey, Ukraine

Group D: Great Britain, Russia, Serbia, Slovak Republic

The bottom four teams must play in a relegation group in which each team plays the other twice. The bottom three teams at the end are relegated to Division B for the 2013 edition.

The second round, also known as the Qualifying Round, is the creation of two groups of six teams.

Groups A and B are merged to form Group E while Groups C and D become Group F.

In this round the teams cross over with each team playing the opposing preliminary group members once.

The top four teams from the two groups then qualify for the Final Round, also known as the final 8 or quarter-final. The remaining teams participate in the 9th to 12th place Classification Round.

The Final Round is basically a knock-out competition with the brackets determining the finishing order in each group.

The first team in each group plays the fourth team in the other group while the second placed team play the third placed one.

The losers from the quarter-final play off in the 5th to 8th place competition. The winners of the semi-final contest the final while the losers play in the third-place match.

With only nine teams in Division B this format has been modified into a round robin league format with all the teams playing each other once. The top three teams at the end of the competition will be promoted.

The nine teams taking part are: Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Romania, Hungary, Israel and Switzerland.

For this edition womensbasketball-in-france.com will be covering the Division A FIBA tournament live from Debrecen until the end of the competition.

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