European Prospects

We come back to some news from this weekend as it has been particularly busy in terms of tournaments, league results and NBA Draft decisions.

The Victor Rho International Basketball tournament in Italy has been won by BSJC DSN from Riga. The Latvians defeated Virtus Bologna in the Final 66-42. They have been led by Ojars Silins who has played the NIJT Qualification Tournament in Rome with Stella Azzurra in December 2009. Silins got elected MVP of the Victor Rho Tournament and had some major support from Klavs Strazdins who finished top scorer of the tournament. Bologna has been led by Aristide Landi who also won the domestic MVP trophy. The third place was for Armani Junior Milano and the fourth spot went to USK Prague.

Jan Vesely did not enter his name to the 2010 NBA Draft as he told our friends at Draftexpress. I was wondering already about his case as no official or unofficial news came out the days before the early entry deadline on the future of the Czech forward. The family of Vesely is mainly focused on the long-term development of the 1990 born player and they consider an additional year with Partizan and especially coach Dusan Vujosevic will help Jan to become an even better prospect. The fact of “refusing” a nearly-sure lottery pick can be seen as a financial risk as Vesely’s value is quite high at the moment and the future is always uncertain. But for such a young player, the individual development is surely more important than a guaranteed NBA contract right now. We will see how this will work out on a long-term basis.

The battle for the 7 qualification spots for the Trophée du Futur in France is still ongoing 3 game-days before the end of the regular season. Next to the organizers from Poitiers, Cholet and ASVEL Villeurbanne were qualified already. This weekend, Paris-Levallois snatched their ticket for the main trophy of the French U21 championship with their win against Roanne. Le Havre and Gravelines-Dunkerque should be able to get their qualification as well by winning their remaining home games. Finally, Nancy, Dijon and Le Mans are still battling for the last 2 spots on the 8 team direct elimination tournament that will be played from the 28th to the 30th May 2010.

The statistical effort of the weekend in the LNB Espoirs championship came from Hyères-Toulon where Florent Tortosa (1m97 – SF – 1989) had 32pts, 12rebs, 7asts and 2stls against Le Havre. So far, the main statistical producers of the French Espoirs League are the following:

Top Scorers

• Ferdinand Prénom (JDA Dijon) 18.3ppg
• Lens Aboudou (JDA Dijon) 18.1ppg
• Jonathan Rousselle (Gravelines-Dunkerque) 17.3ppg

Best Rebounders

• Fréjus Zerbo (Gravelines-Dunkerque) 10.4rpg
• Ousmane Camara (Le Havre) 9.9rpg
• Mikael Var (Poitiers) 9.9rpg

Best Evaluation

• Ferdinand Prénom (JDA Dijon) 21.9epg
• Jonathan Rousselle (Gravelines-Dunkerque) 20.8epg
• Paul Lacombe (ASVEL) 20.0epg

CSKA Moscow won the Russian Junior League in an overtime thriller against Triumph Lyubertsy. Andrey Loginov was the decisive player and MVP for the CSKA team as the forward finished the Final with 23pts and 10rebs. Leonid Spirin, the head coach of the CSKA Junior team confirmed that Loginov has scored a number of key baskets in the end. CSKA had won over Spartak St. Petersburg in the semi-finals where Loginov also had 27pts and 4rebs.

In the NBBL Playoffs in Germany, the main surprise is the elimination of Tröster Breitengüssbach, the team around Philipp Neumann. The German top talent couldn’t do anything against the big defense of Franken Hexer (two times less than 57 points conceded) which helped the team from Nürnberg to win both games. Dennis Ogbe (13pts) and especially the 2m05 tall Daniel Stawowski (19pts 14rebs) did a tremendous job on Neumann on both ends of the floor so that the host team of the Top4 got eliminated in the Quarterfinals. In the second opposition in the South Divisions, Ludwigsburg managed to even the series with ALBA Urspring as the team around Besnik Bekteshi gave the former NBBL champions its second defeat of the whole season.

In the North, ALBA Berlin destroyed Bayer Leverkusen in a great defensive effort and qualified already for the Top4 while Eisbären Bremerhaven survived in the overtime to bring the series back to Paderborn. Anthony Canty led all scorers with 26pts and 6asts while Bill Borekambi did his job in the paint with 19pts 18rebs. For Paderborn, Lars Wendt scored 17pts despite being horrible on shooting (4/21 FGs) while Dominik Malinowski lead the scorers with 21pts 10rebs 2asts but 7tos. The decisive games will played next weekend in Paderborn and Urspring.

The first ever German JBBL (under 16 League) Top 4 will be played with the following teams as they came out of the regional qualification playoffs: IBBA Berlin, ALBA Berlin, Tröster Breitengüssbach and ALBA Urspring. Both Top4 events will be played in Bamberg on the 15th and 16th May 2010.