Photo: fiba.basketball

With the first round of the FIBA World Cup now in the books, it’s time for the round of 16 and the classification round.

The round of 16 will feature four groups of four teams.

Group I has the top two teams from Group A (Poland and Venezuela) and Group B (Argentina and Russia).

Photo: fiba.basketball

Group J has the top two teams from Group C (Spain and Puerto Rico) and Group D (Serbia and Italy).

Photo: fiba.basketball

Group K has the top two teams from Group E (USA and Czech Republic) and Group F (Brazil and Greece).

Photo: fiba.basketball

Group L has the top two teams from Group G (France and Dominican Republic) and Group H (Australia and Lithuania).

Photo: fiba.basketball

The results from the first round carry over and teams will play the two teams from the group that they have not faced before.

The top two teams from each group will advance to the quarterfinals, the third place team from each group will finish in the 9-12 range and the fourth place team from each group will finish in the 13-16 range.

The teams that didn’t make the round of 16 will play for classification (17-32) in the same format as the round of 16 groups.

First place in each group will finish in the 17-20 range, the second place team will finish in the 21-24 range, the third place team will finish in the 25-28 range and the fourth placed team will finish in the 29-32 range.

Olympic hopes on the line

The World Cup will act as a qualification for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and directly qualify seven teams (top two from the Americas and Europe and the top from Africa, Asia and Oceania) to the Olympics and the next 16 best classified teams from the World Cup will be entered in the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament.

The FIBA World Rankings published after the World Cup will help determine the eight additional teams for the Olympic Qualifying Tournament.

Australia already clinched their spot in the 2020 Olympics by being the highest placed Oceania team after New Zealand failed to make the round of 16.

Despite not being able to win the World Cup, the teams in the classification round still have something to play for as well.

This mainly affects teams from Africa (Nigeria, Senegal, Angola, Tunisia and Cote D’Ivoire) and Asia (Iran, China, Philippines, Korea and Jordan) as no team from those regions made the round of 16.

The two best-ranked teams from each region (Africa, Americas, Asia-Oceania and Europe) who were not already qualified for the Olympics will also be selected to participate in the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament.