The first three basketball leagues are almost empty of athletes from the province

Women’s basketball has experienced better times in terms of level players. There are currently six that have played a game this season in the three main Spanish competitions, four of them in the ranks of Milar Córdoba BF that has debuted in the Challenge League (Marta Martínez, Luz Marina Montilla, Nerea Zea and Paula Romero). While, Lucia Del Carmen Lara has debuted in Challenge with Alcobendas and Clara Cáceres is the starting point guard at the Nou Castellón in Liga 2. Lara was trained in the adeba and Cáceres in the marists.

Worse is the situation in the male categories. Since the retirement of Felipe Reyes, no player from the province has been consolidated in the ACB, because only some have come to participate in a specific game. What’s more, this season, everything seems to indicate that it will be the second in a row with practically no presence of players from the province in the ACB or LEB Oro, the two main national divisions. The 83-84 and 84-85 seasons, almost 40 years ago, were the last in a row without Cordoba playing in the first two men’s divisions.

Two Cordovans in the LEB Plata

Yes, there are two people from Cordoba in the LEB Plata, the third category, because the power forward from Ponte plays there Ishmael Tamba (Palma Bahía San Agustín) and the escort Ismael Corraliza (Maderas Sorli Benicarló), both with an important role in their teams. Tamba took his first steps in the Genil Bridge and the city ​​of cordoba and Corraliza in the Maristas.

In the 22-23 season there are 126 teams in the top three Spanish leagues for men and women. If we assume that each team has had an average of 15 players in a game, the 8 players from Cordoba in these competitions mean 0.004% of the total, half of the players that it would correspond to have for its population.

Paradoxically, while there is such a shortage of players, Provincial basketball is now experiencing a stage of effervescence in terms of the participation of teams in interprovincial leagues. The women have one in the second -the Milar in the Challenge League- and three in the fourth -Adeba, UCB and Maristas in the N1- The masculine have one in the fourth -the UCB in the EBA- and six in the fifth –Penarroya, coto cordobaMarists, montillaGenil Bridge and Goat in the N1-. Therefore, there are eleven teams from Cordoba above the provincial competitions, the highest figure in the last 14 seasons.

Record of foreigners in the squads

The existence of so many teams and so few players has caused the clubs have broken the record of foreigners in their squads, since 17 have already passed through them since last October, when more than 12 had never come to Córdoba in the same year. Nobody knows how the current dynamic will end, although it seems clear that bringing more than 23 athletes to the province, including foreigners and non-Cordoba Spaniards, will mean an extra effort in the economy of each one of them.

But within this desert there is at least one oasis. The provincial base teams live their best moments in at least the last 15 years, since they have won 6 titles (5 women’s and 1 men’s) in the last 3 seasons with championships. The women’s minibasketball team has even won in the last two editions played. At the club level, there have been 5 Andalusian titles won in the last 3 seasons with championships (18-19, 20-21 and 21-22), all of them women’s in minis (3), children’s (1) and juniors (1) among the clubs cordobasket (2), Marists, La Salle Y The Charlotte. The female children’s Cordobasket achieved second place in the Spanish Championship last season, something never seen in the female categories in Córdoba. Now it remains for all these promises to be formed by the clubs so that they fill the senior squads of the near future.