European Prospects

The Adidas Eurocamp 2013 is on its way and started this Saturday with the first practices and games. The sad news though came during the night to Saturday as Rudy Gobert announced that he can not come to Italy because of food poisoning. Nevertheless, hundreds of GMs, Team executives, scouts and agents made the trip to Italy to watch the most interesting prospects in Europe.

The first game of the day was marked by the good presence of Nikola Ivanovic. The Montenegrin PG had a really good day 1 in general as he attacked the basket without any fear and showed an improving first step. Next to him, Edgaras Ulanovas was doing a good job for their team with his typical all-around game. A lot of eyed wanted to see how Aquille Carr will do in this setting. The tiny American guard struggled in the beginning but found his way back into the game in the second half without doing anything fancy. Artem Pustovyi had also some good plays in the paint as he attacked the rim strong every time he got the ball.

For the other team, Joan Sastre did really well in a shooter role as he netted several nice long distance shots. Nicolo Melli, who added some good weight, was also a positive factor for his team with good rebounding and pushing the ball in the fast break. Nemanja Nedovic showed his point guard skills as he could blow by his defender several times and looked for the kick-out pass more than for his own shot. Nevertheless, he did no really played better than expected.

After the opening game, France U20 played the Serbian U19 team where the younger guys from the Balkan managed to win the game behind a good effort of combo-guard Stefan Pot who had 5 points but 9 drawn fouls and a double-double of Nikola Jankovic. France struggled heavily in the paint where the Serbs dominated the rebound at will. For the French team, William Howard did ok with 13pts, 7rebs an 4stls while Alexandre Chassang had 17 for the French team. Overall, the Serbian team looked really interesting even without some of their key players.

In the second game with Adidas Eurocamp teams involved, Lucas “Bebe” Nogueria did a really good job as a mobile and athletic big guy. The Brazilian player was very active and looked a lot more mature mentally than during the previous years. Just by reading the stat sheet, it did not look like a huge game by him but the overall impression was very good. He got some good support in the paint by Ondrej Balvin who scored several nice basket out of post up situations. Raul Neto ran the point really well and found his Brazilian team mates in so many good situations in the paint. He looked like a level ahead of other guards on the court.

For the losing side, Andrew Lawrence did a good job as scoring point guard while Oleksandr Lypovyy continued to impress after his performance from last year. He was not very successful in scoring but the overall effort looked really good.

The day was concluded by the game between an All-Star selection and the Team USA. The American team did a really good job against a totally oversized team of campers who was not able to really use their height advantage. In the end, the All-Star team won that game but the main prospects seemed to be players like Devin Robinson or Victor Law.