European Prospects

With the U18 European Championships starting this Thursday in Lithuania, the French magazine Basketnews spoke 3 weeks ago with Head coach Philippe Ory to give his opinion on the players of the U18 team. When the interview was made, there were still a lot of other players in the roster which explains the absence of comments on some of the names on the list. At that moment, the coach was not aware either on the absence of Evan Fournier (thumb ligaments) in his already reduced team (absence of Leo Westermann and Vincent Pourchot)

Thomas Ceci (1m97 – 1992) : A shooting guard with good size who is able to make his shots. He defends really hard. He is somebody who knows what he does, a very solid player.

Rudy Deal (2m02 – 1992) : We are really looking forward to see him against opposition. He did a great job during the Albert-Schweitzer Tournament but was not very successful in scoring. He looks a lot more confident right now so we want to see him doing the same in competition.

Lambert Diacono (1m95 – 1992) : Lambert has put his name on the list because he is aggressive, can shoot the ball and score on the drive. He understands the game. A guard with an interesting future.

Rudy Gobert (2m11 – 1992) : He has the hard job to replace Vincent Pourchot because he is the only tall player that we have on our team. He showed some interesting things already. Right now, he looks a bit soft but with the ongoing preparation, I hope that he will become an important fixation point in the paint.

Livio Jean-Charles (2m02 – 1993) : He is with the Centre Federal, somebody a bit younger who can bring his freshness to the court. He is very dynamic, present in a lot of different parts of the game. We will see if he can make the next step during the European Championship against players that are older than him.

Mathis Keita (1m95 – 1992) : He is one of the main players of the Centre Federal and therefore we hope that he brings his experience of Nationale 1 play to the team. He is very present on the intervals and is capable to play the drive and dish.

Théo Léon (1m78 – 1992) : The PG spot is in reconstruction as we lost Leo Westermann. So Theo will have the difficult role to help us on this position. So far, we are satisfied with his job. He is solid on the defensive end. He is able to score at certain moments and we are very confident in him to give us something on the court.

Yannis Morin (2m04 – 1993) : He is also one of the main players at Centre Federal and he will play on the PF and C spot. He is a bit thin to play the 5 but has a nice verticality and can jump out of his box at every moment.

Hugo Naurais (2m05 – 1992) : Hugo, who we did not really know before is an inside player with a good size. We call him our Lithuanian as he is very technical. He needs to gain in confidence in order to recognize what he can do on the court but he looks very interesting to us.

Valentin Bigote (1m94 – 1992) : He did his high School degree so that we had not much time to see him in action so far.

Hugo Invernizzi (1m90 – 1993)

Jordan Fauconnet (1m80 – 1993)