FIBA Euro Basket 2011 - Group Draw and Championship System

Group Draw and Championship System

The draw ceremony held on 30 January 2011 in the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre, Vilnius, divided the qualified teams into four groups of six, groups A, B, C, and D. The hosts of the evening were Jurgita Jurkutė and Vytautas Rumšas. The balls were drawn by retired basketball players European champions and Olympic medalists Stasys Stonkus, Modestas Paulauskas, Dino Meneghin, Sergėjus Jovaiša, Alexander Anatolyevich Volkov and Arvydas Sabonis. A special concert followed the draw where a song was dedicated for each of the participating nations.

It was decided that Group A games would take place in Panevėžys, Group B in Šiauliai, Group C in Alytus and Group D in Klaipėda.

In the first stage every team had to play against every other team of their group (round robin). This meant five matches per team.

From every group the 3 best teams advanced to the second stage and the 3 worst teams were eliminated. In the second stage 2 new groups were formed. The 3 best teams from groups A and B were united to form group E whereas the 3 best teams from groups C and D were united to form group F.

In these two new groups of the second stage only matches by teams that had not yet played each other had to be played. As for the matches that had already happened in the first stage their results would also count in the second stage. Therefore every team played 3 matches and there were 12 teams in the second stage.

Out of the second stage the 4 best teams from each of the two groups advanced to the quarterfinals (8 teams in total) whereas the 2 worst teams were eliminated from championship (4 teams in total).