Title: FIBA Oceania Championships 2009
Location: Canberra, Australia and Wellington, New Zealand
Discuss: Oceania Championships
Description: The Oceania championships features major players Australia and New Zealand, and very rarely smaller, island countries such as Guam, French Polynesia, American Samoa, and New Caledonia.

This year, Australia and New Zealand will once again be the only countries that are sending teams.

The 2009 championships also marks a change in tournament format.  The Oceania Basketball Federation switched from a best-of-three playoffs, to a two game, home-and-away playoff between the Boomers and Tall Blacks, with total scores as the tiebreaker should the teams split the series.

Generally, the Pacific Island countries that dot Oceania do not have the financial support to maintain their national basketball teams.

Collectively, these other countries have only participated in only five tournaments in the history of the Oceania Championships, the last time being 1999 when Guam brought home the silver (Australia did not participate in 1999 as they automatically qualified for the 2000 Olympics as the hosts of the tournament).

This is the fifth straight tournament in which only Australia and New Zealand have competed in the regional qualifier.

The Boomer squad features Brad Newley, Joe Ingles, Nathan Jawai, Luke Nevill, Mark Worthington, and Aron Baynes.  The Tall Blacks of New Zealand will be lead by Kirk Penney with support from Lindsay Tait, Rob Loe, Alex Pledger, and Tom Abercrombie.

Since both teams have already qualified for the World Basketball Championships next year, this year’s tournament is more about the Trans-Tasman rivalry and bragging rights.

Australia has won in all but two Oceania Championships since the inception of the tournament in 1971. New Zealand took gold medals in the 1999 and 2001 championships.