European Prospects

When the Copa del Rey in Spain is getting heavily covered these days, but except the well-known prospects like Ricky Rubio and Victor Claver, the scouting interest for draft eligible players is more developed in Toulon where the French version is taking place.

According to basketsession, the number of scouts in Toulon was quite interesting with representatives from Dallas, Chicago, Charlotte, Orlando, Seattle, Portland and Toronto. And at the end of the two first days, they were probably not disappointed as some young guns came up with surprising performances.

Of course the biggest name in the competition was Nicolas Batum. Was, yes it was because his team Le Mans lost the opening game in the competition and can already travel back home to prepare the rest of the season. Batum came up with a statline close to its normal performances in the French league. 14pts  and 6rebs was his production. The nice effort in a disastrous performance of the Le Mans team came however from Antoine Diot who scored 15pts in just 18 minutes of action. He was the only one to survive in a team collapse against a fighting team of Vichy.

The second game of the first night brought up an astonishing defensive performance by Alexis Ajinca. The long seven footer who has already been hyped up and trashed in a short time is apparently developing into what will be his future position: defensive center. With 14 rebounds and 7 block shots, he was playing like a goal keeper in soccer. And even these 7 blocks seem to be under the absolute value of his performance as he declared that he had 10 blocks in the game in the press conference. After the nice offensive effort two weeks ago, Ajinca showed how present he can be in the defense and what he is capable of doing when he becomes stable in his play.

When we come to yesterday’s games, you have of course to talk about Nando de Colo from Cholet. 18pts 4steals and 4 assists gave a good impression of his actual playing level. Having more scorer playing on the SG position, de Colo looks like being he first offensive option of his team now. Additionally, Rodrigue Beaubois came up with his best scoring effort since his injury. 12 points at a perfect 4/4 shooting in just 12 minutes show the regained confidence of the athletic guard from Cholet.

We can also note the 19 minutes of Rudy Jomby, his longest appearance on court for this season as he took profit of the injury related absence of starting guard Fabien Causeur.