European Prospects

With the European Championships coming closer, the number of preparation tournaments is increasing as well. This week, two major events will be played in Turkey and France. We took a quick look at both tournaments.

The U20 National Teams of Croatia, Poland, Ukraine, France, Russia and Turkey will meet in Ankara for the Turgut Atakol Tournament. France and Croatia have already met during the Adidas Eurocamp while the French just came from a 2nd place at the EuroEssonne event as well. Both teams look to be among the strongest in the competition that can be followed via Live Stream on the website of the Turkish Basketball federation. The Turkish U20 National Team around the West Virginia player Deniz Kilicli will of course try to win their home competition as well. Ukraine and Poland are probably less strong while Russia is as always quite some mystery of what will come out.

The tournament will start today at 15h00 Turkish time with the game between Poland and Croatia. The opener will be followed at 17h15 by the clash between France and Russia while the host will play against Ukraine at 19h30. This game can be followed through a Live Webcast on http://www.tbf.org.tr/. All the games of the Turkish U20 National Team will have the same treatment and will be available as Live Stream on the website of the Turkish federation and some of them will also be broadcasted by the Turkish Satellite channel TRT3. The full schedule of the tournament can be found here.

The 24th Tournoi Mondial of Douai will start on Wednesday with a new concept and organization. With only 6 participants, all coming from Europe, the attractiveness of the event may be a bit lower than the years before but it remains one of the major preparation tournaments for U18 National Teams. This year, the participants will be Germany, Bulgaria, France, Poland, Croatia and Greece. Some of these nations were also present at the Albert-Schweitzer Tournament a few weeks ago and it will especially be the French team that wants to take their revenge after the disaster in Mannheim.

But the German team around Philipp Neumann will try to underline their status as one of the strongest teams in the competition by dominating Bulgaria right in the first game of the tournament. France will play against Poland for their opener while Croatia will meet with Greece in the last game of the first day. For more information on the tournament, you can find it on the official website of the Douai Tournament.