Kentucky head coach John Calipari as well as assistants from Duke and Kansas are among the coaches headed overseas in the next few days to watch the USA U17 squad at the FIBA U17 World Championship in Zaragoza, Spain,
Coaches from UCLA, N.C. State, Oregon and St. John’s are also expected in the wake of a new rule that allows college coaches to recruit at any FIBA World Championship event, sources said.
“Coach Cal said he’s coming to Spain to come and watch a game,” 2017 point guard Immanuel Quickley told SNY.tv.
Quickley, a 6-foot-4 Class of 2018 point guard from John Carroll (Md.) High School, recently received texts from Duke, Washington, Miami and Kentucky. He has added offers from Villanova, Arizona, Texas A&M, UCLA and Maryland.
The U17 roster includes several players who won gold last summer with the U16 team: Jordan Brown (Woodcreek H.S./Roseville, Calif.); Wendell Carter Jr. (Pace Academy/Fairburn, Ga.); Markus Howard (Findlay Prep, Nev./Chandler, Ariz.); Kevin Knox II (Tampa Catholic H.S./Riverview, Fla.); Javonte Smart (Scotlandville H.S./Baton Rouge, La.) and Gary Trent Jr. (Apple Valley H.S./Burnsville, Minn.).
“They’re going to help us in certain situations so that we can get better,” said Collin Sexton (Pebblebrook H.S./Mableton, Ga.), who is on his first trip outside the United States and will play in his first USA Basketball contest this week. “That helps a lot to have those (U16) guys on the team.”
The remaining five athletes donning a USA Basketball jersey for the first time are: Quickley; Troy Brown (Centennial H.S./Las Vegas, Nev.); Carte’Are Gordon (Webster Groves H.S./St. Louis, Mo.); and Austin Wiley (Spain Park H.S./Hoover, Ala).
The U.S. will open play on Thursday afternoon against Taiwan (2:30 pm, all times listed are EDT), silver medalists at the 2015 FIBA Asia U16 Championship. From there, the USA takes on 2015 Eurobasket U16 bronze medalist Turkey (3 pm) July 24 and closes preliminary play July 26 versus 2015 FIBA Africa U16 gold medalist Egypt (8:15 am).
For the first time both the men’s and women’s U17 World Championships are being held at in the same city, so be sure to check both the USA men’s and women’s, then logon to FIBA’s YouTube channel to follow all the action here in Spain and watch as both teams improve over the next two weeks in their quest for gold.
(USA Basketball contributed)
NKentucky head coach John Calipari as well as assistants from Duke and Kansas are among the coaches headed to Spain in the next few days to watch the USA U17 squad.
