As Guyana prepares to compete in the highly-anticipated \u201cNations Cup\u201d tournament, set to take place from January 24 to January 27 in Paramaribo, Suriname, the Guyana Basketball Federation (GBF) concluded the men\u2019s national try-outs on Sunday, January 12, which Head Coach Adrian Hooper conducted.<\/p>\n
The trials at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall (CASH) included standout performers from the ongoing One Guyana Premier Basketball League:<\/p>\n
\nHead Coach Hooper, speaking exclusively to Guyana Times Sport, divulged that the mixture of youth and experienced players would have a positive impact on the team coming out victorious.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cAlright, basically we would have shortlisted a team of 20 players. The guys came out in numbers to put their best foot forward. Today being Sunday, we had trials on Saturday also. It was just for two days, so now we\u2019re going to go back to the drawing board,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cWe want to shortlist the team to at least 15 players. And from there, we\u2019re going to break it down to the final 12 that we\u2019ll be travelling [with]. So, it\u2019s just a matter of just selecting the right 15 to move forward.
\n\u201cWell, it\u2019s a new group I\u2019m working with. I\u2019m the second in coaching the national team. It\u2019s a good experience, but I\u2019m almost certain that we\u2019ll try to get the best players who will represent Guyana in this tournament.
\n\u201cWhether it be youths or whether it be the older generation. But a combination of both should do good for us in this tri-nation series in Suriname. And we look forward to coming victorious.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nWhen quizzed on areas needed for improvement to reap success, Hooper disclosed that he would be trying to focus more defensively, restricting teams from scoring and he also noted that the ongoing One Guyana Tournament has a positive Impact as he was able to select the best players from the tournament.<\/p>\n
\n\nHooper said, \u201cWell, I will be trying my best to focus on mostly defence for the team. Because most of the competition that we face when we leave the shores, there\u2019s a lot of bigger and taller competition out there. So, we\u2019ve got to focus more on defence to at least limit the other teams\u2019 scoring and transition baskets and stuff like that.\u201d
\n\u201cSo, it\u2019s more of a defensive team and to be balanced out at the same time to take this round.\u201d
\n\u201cWell, the tournament playing right now is a plus for us, because we\u2019re able to pull players directly from this tournament that are excelling right now. So, we actually pulled the best of the best from the tournament at present to try out for this team, this national team.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nIn a press release on Friday, GBF President Michael Singh, indicated the Nations Cup marks the beginning of what promises to be a busy and exciting year for Guyana\u2019s National basketball team and that the tournament serves as a key step in the team\u2019s preparation to defend their title at the Caribbean Basketball Confederation (CBC) Championship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As Guyana prepares to compete in the highly-anticipated \u201cNations Cup\u201d tournament, set to take place from January 24 to January 27 in Paramaribo, Suriname, the Guyana Basketball Federation (GBF) concluded the men\u2019s national try-outs on Sunday, January 12, which Head Coach Adrian Hooper conducted. The trials at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall (CASH) included standout…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5034,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[97,96,98],"class_list":["post-5033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-competitions","tag-grenada","tag-nations-cup","tag-suriname","article-list-item","animate"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/guyanabasketball.com\/gy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/WhatsApp-Image-2025-01-08-at-11.16.47.jpeg?fit=1230%2C1600&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/guyanabasketball.com\/gy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/guyanabasketball.com\/gy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/guyanabasketball.com\/gy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guyanabasketball.com\/gy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guyanabasketball.com\/gy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/guyanabasketball.com\/gy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5038,"href":"https:\/\/guyanabasketball.com\/gy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5033\/revisions\/5038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guyanabasketball.com\/gy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/guyanabasketball.com\/gy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guyanabasketball.com\/gy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guyanabasketball.com\/gy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}