SAO PAULO (FIBA World Championship for Women) - The 2014 FIBA World Championship for Women is just around the corner. In the lead-up to the biggest international basketball event, we take an individual look at all 16 teams.

Country: Brazil
FIBA bwin Ranking Women: No. 7
Last participation in the FIBA World Championship for Women: 2010 (4 wins, 4 defeats, 9th place)
Best result in the history of the FIBA World Championship for Women: one-time winners (1994)
Result in qualifying tournament for 2014 FIBA World Championship for Women: 3rd place at FIBA Americas Championship for Women (5 wins, 1 defeat).

The palpable relief when Brazil squeezed into the FIBA World Championship for Women after taking third place in the FIBA Americas Championship for Women in Mexico last year reverberated right around the women's basketball world.

There are few nations which can boast such a brilliant tradition and affinity with the FIBA World Championship than Brazil and to have missed out on playing at Turkey 2014 would be have been a crushing blow and a real dent to national pride.

It would have also been a disaster in terms of the their real goal which is posting a strong performance as hosts of the next Olympic Games in two years.

With this understandably being the main target, the FIBA World Championship for Women could prove an all-important acid test of whether they have the sufficient time to evolve fully before 2016. Indeed it will be their one and only opportunity to truly measure up against the very best prior to the action getting underway in Rio.

Even taking into account the fact that Brazil have been in transition - and to some extent, still are - there can't be too many excuses for a below-par display at this tournament.

Head coach Luiz Augusto Zanon used this in mitigation of their failure to reach the FIBA Americas Final in Mexico last year.

He has insisted his team have improved and Brazil have certainly given lots of game time to their emerging players who will support what is shaping up to be a headline quartet.

Their WNBA trio of veteran star Erika Souza, powerhouse Damiris Dantas and skilled Nadia Colhado will inject some further quality into a line-up which has been operating around the very productive Clarissa Dos Santos during the bulk of the warm-up games.

Certainly these four players should prove to be the main protagonists, but it could be the supporting cast which make the biggest difference and take Brazil to a higher level.

If veteran guard Adriana Pinto and the burgeoning talent of Patrica Teixeira are utilised, Brazil can count on two players that can nail shots from behind the three-point line.

There is inevitably an issue for all Brazilian players being unfairly compared to the glory days of the past - times which famously harvested a FIBA World Championship for Women gold medal exactly 20 years ago.

But in 1994, there was the undeniable genius of Hortencia and another seriously big fish in the shape of Janeth Arcain.

It is a wholly different scenario 20 years later.

With Rio 2016 looming large in the background, it is all about gaining a more accurate understanding of what work needs to be undertaken in the next couple of years to turn Brazil into genuine podium challengers.

FIBA