Canada Qualifies

Photo credit: FIBA/Jose Jimenez

Well Canada some how manged to find a way to Turkey. It took getting help and beating the Dominican Republic in a must win game last night in Puerto Rico. It was a thrilling finish but the game was shown on tape delay which made it a tad bit hard to avoid hearing the news. This win perhaps secures Leo Rautins his job moving forward. The 80-76 win left Charlie V feeling very disappointed as he tweeted from his account @CV31 how disappointed he was over the loss.

This marks the first time Canada will be going to the World Championships since way back in 2002. In that tournament they finished a disappointing 13th. It will be interesting to see if Canada will have a Red Rocket on board for Turkey next year. Matt Bonner who as most know married Canadian and has a Canadian grandparent, has expressed interest in playing for Canada internationally.

The tournament does continue on as Canada will play in a Semi-Final today vs Brazil. Canada did play tough against Brazil in an earlier match-up. You can catch the Game on the Score at 11pm on tape delay. But the true mission for Canada has been accomplished in qualifying for the Worlds. It may not have been pretty at times but they don't ask how you got something accomplished just if you did. Well Canada did and congratulations to them on that. You could see all of the joy from these guys when that final whistle blew and it was great to see. Let's face facts not a lot of folks pay attention to the basketball in this country. You would hope in qualifying for the Worlds and perhaps adding a Matt Bonner will start to make people wake up and take notice.

Despite having a few of the games on tape delay, full marks to The Score for showing these games for the folks that do care. No other network stepped up and The Score has the past 2 years when Canada tried to qualify for the Olympics last year in Greece and again here with Canada trying to make it to the Worlds. The Dino Nation Blog is also a blog that does it's best to support Canada Basketball and will continue to do so. Sure I may not agree all the time with what has gone on with the program. But I care about it and that is what they need more of. People caring and giving coverage to this program and team. So congrats to Canada Basketball and please make sure to say hello to Raptors Hedo Turkoglu when you are visiting his country next year.