Published: September 5, 2025
KIGALI, Rwanda — Liberia’s under-16 national basketball team opened its FIBA Afrobasket Youth Championship campaign Thursday with a 69-57 loss to powerhouse Mali, fielding just eight players after four were ruled ineligible in age-verification tests.
Liberia Basketball Association Secretary General Calvin Diggs confirmed that four players failed FIBA’s mandatory MRI scans, reducing the squad from 12 to 8. “Four out of the 12 players taken to the competition failed the radioactive or age-verification test and were declared ineligible to compete,” Diggs told The Liberian Investigator. He said Liberia could challenge the ruling with additional tests, but only at its own expense.
The disqualifications compounded existing challenges. Upon arrival in Kigali on Tuesday, reports surfaced that the squad had been left without government funding for accommodations, meals, or allowances. Diggs denied the team was stranded, stressing they are lodged “in a very decent hotel” and being fed three times daily, though he acknowledged players have yet to receive per diem.
“The players didn’t receive a dime since the qualifiers in Monrovia,” Diggs said. “We are still indebted to them and to several vendors because the government hasn’t released the money we requested. But the players remain motivated to represent their country.”
This is not the first time Liberia’s youth program has run into eligibility controversies. In August 2024, two players from the under-18 men’s squad were barred from the FIBA Zone 3 qualifiers in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, for failing similar tests.
Liberia reached the 2025 Afrobasket Youth Championship via a wild-card berth after finishing runners-up to Ivory Coast in regional qualifying. Despite Thursday’s loss, the Lone Star U-16s remain alive in Group C, where they face Egypt on Sept. 7 and Morocco on Sept. 10.
The 12-nation tournament features host Rwanda alongside Liberia, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Angola, Cameroon, Uganda, Morocco, Tunisia, Mali and Egypt.
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