POSTED BY: Eurobasket News
MABA Stadium is proud to host the 4th Seri Mutiara Cup, organized by NBL Asia. The competition will see eight teams from eight countries in action from the 2nd to 7th of October 2018. The participating teams and groupings will be:
Group A
Malaysia Matrix
Malaysia's representatives, who won the inaugural Seri Mutiara Cup in 2015. Matrix were runners up in 2016 and finished fourth in 2017. Matrix will be featuring key players from the Malaysian National Team together with imports.
Macau Black Bears
The Asean Basketball League (ABL) team formerly known as Chongson Kungfu, will be preparing for the upcoming ABL season. The Black Bears with be led by ABL Season 8 World Import and Heritage Import MVPs, Anthony Tucker and Mikh McKinney.
KCC Egis (South Korea)
The South Korean team from Jeonju are 5 time Korean Basketball League (KBL) Champions and have on their roster, the 7 ft 3 Ha Seung Jin, the only Korean player to ever play in the NBA.
BC Partizan (Serbia)
A well known Serbian Basketball Club that has produced 12 NBA Players including Vlade Divac and Bogdan Bogdanovic. The club has won 21 National Championships in Serbia and won the EuroLeague in 1992. The club will be sending their youth line up to participate for the tournament.
Group B
Illawarra Hawks (Australia)
Hailing from Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia, the Hawks are the only team has played in every season of NBL Australia since its inception in 1979. The team has won NBL championship and was most recently runners up of the 2016/2017 season.
Fubon Braves (Taiwan)
The 2017/2018 SBL Season runners up, return for their second year in a row at the Seri Mutiara Cup. The team will be bannered by Taiwan national team player, 'Jet' Chang Tsung-Hsien and Joseph Lin, the younger brother of NBA player Jeremy Lin.
Hong Kong Eastern
The 2016/2017 ABL Champions will be participating as preparations for the upcoming ABL Season. The team also recently won their first ever Hong Kong A1 Championship, coming from 0-2 down, to win 3-2 against traditional rivals, SCAA. A familiar name expected to be in the line, will be the 7 ft 5 Maltese Samuel Deguara, the fourth tallest professional basketball player in the world.
Texas All Stars
For the first time ever, the Seri Mutiara Cup will feature a team from USA. The team will be made out of players from development league teams from the state of Texas.
The top two teams from each group will move onto the semi finals.
Courtesy of: maba.com.my
