European Prospects

This week, the Euroleague presented the rules for the Nike International Junior Tournament that will be played during the Euroleague Final Four in Berlin. 3 tournaments will be official qualification tournaments this year. From 27th to 29th December will be played the Città di Roma tournament, from 4th to 6th January will be played the 30th Torneo International Junior in L’Hospitalet and finally the City of Belgrade tournament will be held from 13th to 15th February 2009.

The 6 finalist will qualify for Berlin where they will meet the current champions FMP Belgrade as well as a Wildcard team. Should a team qualify for the Berlin event through more than one avenue, a new wild card will exist.

For the first of these three tournaments, we got the names of the teams participating and we take a quick look at who are the players to follow.

Zalgiris Kaunas will probably feature the most interesting players of the Sabonis Basketball school and from their own youth program. Vytenis Cizauskas will probably the leader of the Lithuanian squad that will be most likely very young with a majority of 1992 born players. The local Stella Azzura and Lottomatica Roma teams are more or less unknown to me. Montepaschi Siena will have the Georgian giant Nikola Metreveli on the roster.

Olimpija Ljubljana should feature a very interesting roster with the already Adriatic League experienced Mirza Sarajlija and Matic Sirnik. Cibona Zagreb will have a nice bunch of talented players as always while the Virtus Bologna team will probably be built around Riccardo Moraschini. Benetton Fribourg wants to show the talent level from Switzerland and features the very promising 1992 generation around Stefan Petkovic.

Gran Canaria will bring in Oscar Rodriguez or the Czech Republic born player Milan Jaros while Benetton Treviso will have Tomaso Ingrosso from 1992. Maroussi Athens is unknown to me while ALBA Berlin will feature players from their own youth team as well as several members of their partner Urspring Academy.