IE Off To Ivory Coast

By Julu M. Johnson, Jr.

The basketball champion team of Liberia, Invincible Eleven (IE) has left the country for Ivory Coast.

IE and NPA Pythons are expected to compete in this year¡¦s African Champions Cup for Men.

IE began traveling by road on Sunday, September 24, 2004, while the NPA Pythons would go by air via Weasua airline on Thursday, September 29, 2006. IE surprisingly won the league title, while the NPA Pythons finished as runners-up at the end of the last season.

The two clubs will now have to defend themselves in the Group A preliminaries that would take place in Ivory Coast from September 30 to October 8, 2006 in Abidjan.

Both IE and NPA Pythons would face teams from The Gambia, Ghana, Libya, Somalia and Sierra Leone.

Two teams also in the zone, ABC of Ivory Coast and Dodan Warriors of Nigeria have automatically qualified for the finals.
There are two qualifying zones in all. Group B preliminaries began in DR Congo on 21 September and would end on the 30th of the same month.

The final round of the competition will take place in Lagos, Nigeria from 10 to 19 November, 2006.

The last time Liberian clubs were at the African Champions Cup was in 2005. By then, the country was represented by NPA Pythons and LPRC Oilers.