The list of the European early-entrants has been published a few days ago, so I took the time to go over it and give you my opinion, who will get drafted, who will take his name out again and other thoughts on the list.

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The last part of my International Junior Tournament report talks about the two finalists: FC Barcelona and FMP Zeleznik Belgrade. FMP has reached with this win the deserved European crown for Junior teams and it does not look like any other European club team is at their level right now.

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The next part of the Junior Tournament Report talks about the two Lithuanian teams of Lietuvos Rytas and Zalgiris Kaunas. Both were very different. While Lietuvos Rytas’ game was based a lot on their guards play, the Zalgiris team lived essentially from their inside guys.

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After the first part of my recap of the Nike International Junior Tournament yesterday, here is the second part of the report which contains player profiles of Cibona Zagreb and Real Madrid junior teams.

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The Nike International Junior Tournament 2008 is history and the winner is coming from Serbia. Without any big surprise, the 2008 edition goes to FMP Zeleznik who can consider themselves now as the top European youth program after having won all the major tournaments this season.

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I have spent this 1st of May in the Palalido in Milano, Italy to follow the final day of the 25th edition of the Victor Rho Tournament. Unfortunately, this year’s edition did not feature the same amount of talent than the years before because of the International Junior Tournament played in Madrid. For this reason, Real Madrid and FMP were only present with their reserve players in Rho and some smaller teams took profit of this situation.

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• The Euroleague has announced the winner of its Rising Star Trophy: it is Danilo Gallinari. I thought it would be Nikola Pekovic though but the selection committee took the Italian.
• Today starts the Victor Rho tournament for U18 and U14 teams. All infos can be found on the official website. A few names from the announced rosters: Dejan Musli, B.J. Mullens, Nikola Mirotic, Mirza Sarajlija, Mario Delas, Nemanja Jaramaz. Europeanprospects will be in Rho for the Final Day of the competition.
• The following 8 teams will play the Nike International Junior Tournament during the Final Four in Madrid: FMP Zeleznik (Hospitalet and Belgrade Tournament winner), FC Barcelona (Hospitalet runner-up), Lietuvos Rytas (Belgrade runner-up), Cibona Zagreb (Belgrade 3rd placed), Zalgiris Kaunas (title holder), Real Madrid (host), Maccabi Tel Aviv (Wildcard) and Red Star Belgrade (Wildcard. Europeanprospects will be present in Madrid.
• Vladimir Stimac from Valmiera got elected MVP of this year’s edition of the Baltic League. A very surprising title for the young Serbian Center.
• German prospect Robin Benzing, who is actually playing for Langen in ProA will most likely join the NCAA next season despite risking a one year suspension for breaching the NCAA rules like it happened to Lucca Staiger and Fabian Boeke this year. He is in close contact to sign with Fresno State.

A little bit later than usual, but here it is again: the European Prospects Mock Draft Review. After adapting the formula to calculate a bit in order to take into account the update dates of the different mocks, here we are with the results as of today.

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This weekend were played the Slovenian U19 championships in a Final Four modus in the hometown of the Mario Primorac Basketball school. The former player of ALBA Berlin reached as coach the semi-finals of the championship with his team but lost there against KK Parklji. The Finals have been dominated by KD Geoplin Slovan.

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This Friday, three very interesting French prospects have been on the court together in Pau in the league game between Pau-Orthez and Cholet. I speak of course of Ludo Vaty, Nando de Colo and Rodrigue Beaubois. Here is a short recap of the games of the three players.

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The German 2nd and 3rd leagues are featuring some very interesting young players. The BBL Bundesliga is dominated by foreigners, so a lot of youth players chose to player for a second or third division team in order to get some playing time and gain experience. Now, the league elected their most rewarding youngsters and here are the results.

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Virtually unknown on the European Basketball scene before last weekend, the Norwegian Torgrim Sommerfeldt was probably the biggest surprise in the World roster of the Nike Hoop Summit. I checked with him after his return to Norway how did he ended up in Portland and what his future plans are.

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While not having seen the game (if anyone wants to send me a copy would be nice ), I had to take a look at what the other websites are saying about the Europeans present in Portland. I found a nice article from SI.com taking a look particularly at Serge Ibaka and Alexis Ajinca.

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As I will be off this weekend, I give your some picks to follow the Nike Hoops Summit which will be held this weekend in Portland.

• A first look at the World team by OregonLive
• History repeating for some German? Dirk Nowitzki broke out on the US scene with his Hoops Summit performance and comments on the future of Tim Ohlbrecht.
• The Canadian view
• Draftexpress is of course covering the event intensively
• For the Spanish readers is this website probably the best on to follow the event
• If you want to follow discussions in German about the event, here is the right place
• World Select Team coach Rob Beveridge about the talent he has this year.
• Preview of the official Trailblazers website on the World Team
• Finally, the official website

This Saturday will be played the already traditional Nike Hoop Summit in Portland. I have selected a couple of Internet clips of the European based players that will participate in this year’s edition.

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Last week, I got some information from reader Guillaume Althoffer about the U16 Tournament in Bellegarde. With the participation of the National Teams from Greece, Czech Republic, France and Serbia, the competition level was correct and it was a good possibility to see some future greats.

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• What a game for Christian Standhardinger this weekend with his German ProB team. 35pts, 12rebs and 8 assists for a 51 efficiency rating.
• Nicolas Batum also had one of his better games in a double overtime win for Le Mans. The French forward finished with 19pts and 9 assists.
• Jorn Steinbach, the 1989 born Belgian PG came up with a nice 25pts scoring effort to lead his team to a first victory in the Playoffs that would eventually bring Waregem to Division 1 in Belgium
• With some delay, FMP Zeleznik won the FMP Tournament last weekend in Belgrade in a highly disputed Final against Lietuvos Rytas. FMP forward Bojan Subotic was named MVP for leading his team to a perfect 4-0 record. He was joined on the all-tournament team by fellow FMP big man Dejan Musli, Montepaschi forward Nika Metreveli and the Partizan duo of Nemanja Jaramay and Aleksander Vlahovic. All the results and stats can be found here.
• With these results, we know now already 6 participants for the upcoming NIKE International Junior Tournament to be played at the Euroleague Final Four in Madrid in the beginning of May: Real Madrid (Hosts), Zalgiris Kaunas (Champions 2007), FC Barcelona, FMP Zeleznik, Lietuvos Rytas and Red Star Belgrade. Two wildcards will be distributed within the next weeks.

With a little bit of delay, here are the nominees for the EuropeanProspects.com Prospect of the Month of March 2008. The February award goes to Rudy Mbemba from Sweden by the way.

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After having analyzed in the detail the four best placed European nations of the tournament, I will come back to the other European teams, unfortunately only in a shorter fashion as I saw these teams only once in Mannheim. Also, I will limit myself really to the main players of these teams in order to not go too much in the detail.

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Maybe the positive surprise of the tournament was the 8th place of Sweden. The team from coach Tommie Hansson won the game it had to win against Germany in order to qualify for the Top 8 but then declined slowly in their performance. The team has however some interesting prospects in their roster, especially from the 1991 generation.

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