European Prospects

Not only the Division  A of the U18 European Championship will start this weekend, but also the Division B will have its first games on Friday in Debrecen, Hungary. To preview this tournament is quite more difficult because lots of nations are not known for producing elite prospects, but this year, the tournament looks particularly promising.

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This Friday will start the FIBA Europe U18 European Championship of Division A in Amaliada and Pyrgos in Greece. I took a closer look at the different teams and collected some expert opinions on the upcoming tournament.

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Some more notes from the U20 Tournament that has been played in Luxembourg this week.

• France continued their run to finish the tournament unbeaten. And it was also Kim Tillie that continued his impressive play during this tournament. After the performances here, France U20 can seriously be considered as a Medal candidate in Riga for the U20 European Championships. Having a back court rotation with Antoine Diot, Thomas Heurtel, Aboulaye M’Baye, Rudy Jomby and Edwin Jackson is particularly impressive on this level. And the inside sector with hard working role players like Guy-Marc Michel and the scoring Adrien Moerman is also on a very high level.
• Lithuania finished 2nd of the tournament with only one loss, against France. After totally dominating Spain on Friday, the Lithuanians had a nice comeback win on Saturday against Russia while they had no problems to destroy Luxembourg tonight. The Baltic team has multiple scoring options and is of course having their clear-cut leader in Martynas Gecevicius. But also guys like Vaidas Cepukaitis, Sarunas Vasiliauskas and the surprising Canada located Evaldas Zabas are doing a good job. Zabas only joined the team this year after he came to Lithuania and showed up at the preparation camp asking if he could join the team. He practiced hard and made the cut and is now in the rotation. Zabas is currently considered as the 2nd best PG in Canada just behind Devoe Joseph.
• A disappointing Spanish team finished however on the correct 3rd place. Disappointing especially in the games I saw them play. But if you add Victor Claver, who just got cut from the Spanish senior National team for the Olympics, you have a very talented and well equilibrated team. Pablo Aguilar was playing a correct tournament over the whole days doing a bit of everything. With the addition of Claver, the inside game will be enforced because for the moment, Spain was a bit weak over there.
• The fourth place was for Turkey after their wins against Russia and Luxembourg. The team from coach Orhun Ene was clearly led by Dogus Balbay and Baris Hersek but the rest of the team could never come up with top-level European performances. In Riga, we won’t probably see a lot of improvement for them as the roster simply lacks of quality in my eyes.
• Russia finishes fifth of the tournament with a lonely win over Luxembourg. Despite aligning talented players like Dimitry Khvostov, Artem Yakovenko, Artem Zabelin or Ilya Syrovatko, Russia could never setup great basketball or at least, could not stand to play on a high level for 40 minutes. The addition of Alexey Shved is questionable and with the displayed attitude here, I won’t see them going far in Riga.
• Luxembourg finished last of the tournament but showed extreme will and fighting spirit throughout the 5 days. Being incredibly inferior in terms of size, the team played a speedy guard game based on aggressive defense and three point shooting. They showed their best game probably against Turkey where they remained in the game until the 32nd minute but then got killed in the last 8 of the game. A very big honorable mention for the whole team.
• My personal All-Tournament team would be the following:
  PG Sarunas Vasiliauskas (Lithuania)
  SG Edwin Jackson (France)
  SF Pablo Aguilar (Spain)
  PF Kim Tillie (France)
  C Vaidas Cepukaitis (Lithuania)

These days is played a U20 tournament with European top teams in the tiny Luxembourg. France, Lithuania, Russia, Turkey, Spain and a U23 selection of the host play against each until Sunday. After two days, here are my first thoughts on the games.

• In the first game of the tournament, Turkey lost against Lithuania where the three point shooting was going. Behind the 4/4 from Lukas Brazdauskis, the Liths beat the Turks 85-82 where Dogus Balbay showed that he is fully back after his injury year in the United States.
• Spain beat Russia in a poor game where the two main player for every team were not present. Neither Alexey Shved, nor Victor Claver traveled to this tournament and so it were the other guys that played the game. For Spain, let’s notice the correct performance of Pablo Aguilar while for the Russians, Artem Yakovenko did his job. Artem Zabelin however looked extremely soft and was more focused on discussing with the refs than playing basketball.
• France had no problem to beat a poor Luxembourg team. Kim Tillie played great after his season in Utah.
• Day 2 started with another defeat for the underperforming Russian team where Yakovenko was correct again. Dogus Balbay is playing a nearly perfect tournament so far for Turkey as he is currently having an incredible 16/18 2FG. He sees good support from Baris Hersek who hits his long distance shots.
• France made a defense show against Lithuania and totally destroyed the Baltic team 83-58. A great collective effort and extremely aggressive defense were the keys for the 2006 U18 champions generation where Kim Tillie showed once again his athletic game and good shooting touch.
• The game of the night was however at the surprise of everybody in the gym the matchup between Luxembourg and Spain. The huge favorites from Iberia were a bit surprised when the Luxembourgish team that played with 4 guards and 1 forward was only trailing by 5 at the half. The Spanish managed to make the game winning effort in the first 15 minutes of the 2nd half but Luxembourg fought back to lose only by 16 points. Spain did not really looked concerned about this game as they should. But Luxembourg also hit an incredible 16/27 from behind the arc.

The preparation phase of the different European Youth championships continues. And here are some of the results collected through the net.

• Turkish U16 team won an International Tournament in Russia after beating the Serbian National team in the Final 67-65. Turkey, who played without Enes Kanter, was led by Kevin Kaspar and Burat Yüksel in the final game who both scored in double figures.
• The German U20 team played 3 friendlies against Turkey and finished with 1 win and two losses. In the last game, Germany was led by the athletic Elias Harris who scored 18, while Philipp Schwethelm had 11. Turkey had its top scorer in Dogus Balbay who scored 18 pts. The Turkish team will travel to Luxembourg where they will play their next preparation tournament from this Wednesday on while Germany will face off against Belgium three times this week.
• The Latvian U20 is also preparing for their European Championship played at home in Riga and beat Slovenia three friendly games this weekend. Latvia won twice behind the efforts of Rihards Kuksiks and Dairis Bertans.
• The Italian U18 was struggling in Russia this weekend as they finished last in a tournament where they played against the Czech Republic, Greece and the hosts. The tournament has been won by Greece who won all three games. Russia finished 2nd while the Czech Republic had the third place in the end.
• The Serbian U20 has won a preparation game against the Greek squad 72-66 this weekend. Marko Keselj was the top scorer for the Serbian squad. They will continue their preparation this week with some more games.
• Spain won their preparation tournament for U18 teams by beating France in the Final 75-65. The Iberian have a great team around their 1991 born talent Alberto Jodar while France is continuing to improve after their win in Douai. The team of coach Ory impressed especially with a defensive performance against Germany where they limited the team of Kay Blümel to only 37 points. Croatia, who beat France in the tournament saw the return of Tomislav Zubcic who missed the Douai rendez-vous a few weeks ago.

For the newly created U17 World Championship, which will be played for the first time 2010, 6 countries have announced their candidature. Germany, France, China, Italy, Maroc and Kazakhstan will be in the race to organize this new event. This has today been announced by the German basketball federation.

The decision who will organize this event will be taken by the FIBA Central Board in May 2009. Twelve teams will participate in the tournament that will feature the top teams of the U16 Championships of 2009.

Finally, we come to the big guys present in Douai. And here, the quality was rather high with some top European talent but also good prospects from Africa and the United States.

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In general, not a lot of good forward material was present in Douai. The most talented one would have been Tomislav Zubcic but he was not present with the Croatian National team. So I included some PF into this category in order to have some guys to talk about.

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The different European Youth National Teams are in their preparation phase for the European Youth championships that will be played this summer. Here are some of the notes on the different teams as they have done so far.

• The Greek U20 team will get the support from Florida Gator Nick Calathes this summer in the U20 competition as he has reported in a FIBA Europe interview these days. the are also rumors that Kosta Koufos could join the team after the NBA Summer Leagues.
• One of the strongest U20 preparation tournaments will be played from the 16th to the 20th July in Luxembourg. The participating nations are France, Russia, Lithuania, Turkey, Spain and a U23 selection from Luxembourg. Spain has announced their preliminary roster for this tournament which includes also Victor Claver from Pamesa Valencia.
• An interesting U18 tournament will be played this weekend in Syros/Greece with Turkey, Russia, Bulgaria and Greece. The Turkish team will be nearly the same that played already last weekend in Douai.
• The Romanian U20 national team won a preparation tournament in Targu Mures, the location of the B-Division championship in the beginning of August. The team build around Titus Nicoara and Vlad Moldoveanu won its three games against Ireland, Macedonia and Bulgaria. Titus Nicoara earned the MVP trophy in this three days of action.
• Another interesting U20 preparation tournament will be played in the Italian city of Domegge with the participation of Greece, Slovenia, Italy and Georgia. The dates for this event are from the 18th July to the 20th July.
• The German U20 team around Robin Benzing and Elias Harris won its three games in a tournament in Poland this weekend. They beat the hosts twice and Croatia as well. The team of coach Emir Mutapcic will travel to Italy next weekend to play there against Russia, Israel and Italy.
• Finally, I wanted to mention a story that is a bit sad. 1987 born German PG Nicolai Simon could see his basketball career end at the tender age of 21 already. After having cracked the rotation of ALBA Berlin in the 2006/07 season, the former Urspring Academy member injures his back in November 2007 and suffers now from never ending back problems and did not see the court anymore since then.  Even if he does not think about a career end yet, Nicolai is doing everything to avoid this to happen. We wish him good luck as he was one of the most talented players of the German 1987 generation.

To start the reports about the tournament in Douai, I will first of all take a look at the Guards of the different teams. Please note that I will focus on the European guys, so the US and African players will be named but not described in detail.

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