European Prospects

The month of December/Christmas/New Year period is normally filled with interesting tournaments for Youth Basketball. We checked a few news and notes that are in relation with those upcoming events. For a full overview of the main tournaments, you can find it on our Tournament Agenda.

The first major date is from the 5th to 8th December in Iscar (Spain) where some of the best European U16 National Teams will play. Last year,Turkey won the Gold Medal in front of Spain and they will try to defend their title against Montenegro, Russia, Portugal, Poland, Italy, Spain and the Castilla Leon Region.

On the same weekend, Italy will feature an interesting U17 tournament in Santa Margherita Ligure and Rapallo including the major Italian club teams together with Real Madrid and Partizan Belgrade. Additionally, the Danish team of Vaerlose (with 94 born top prospect Rasmus Larsen) will play there as well.

The German Academy Urspringschule will travel to the United States in December to play at the famous City of Palms Classic Tournament. The team will play in the Signature Series from 20th to 22nd December against some of the most talented Schools in the United States including the Academy of the New Church (Rakeem Christmans, Malcom Gilbert, Savon Goodman) and Westchester Country Day (Quincy Miller, Deuce Bello) among others. Urspring will be lead by Malik Müller (high major interest, incl. UConn), Kevin Bright (Iowa State, Nebraska) and Julius Wolf and they will get the support of U16 player Gavin Schilling who is back in Germany after a year in the United States.

Just after Christmas, the International Tournament in Pordenone (Italy) will also feature some interesting teams like Olimpija Ljubljana and Vaerlose.

For the International U16 Tournament in Geneva that will be played at the end of the month, the German coach Harald Stein has published a first list of players that will be invited. This team should be lead by Gavin Schilling, Janis Stielow, David Taylor and the 2m09 tall Daniel Mayr who had the biggest stat line in the German U16 league so far with 36pts, 24rebs and 8blks for his team in Jena. Other teams that will compete from the 27th to 29th December are Spain, Italy, France, Serbia, Slovenia, Switzerland and a selection of the Geneva region.

This first NIJT Qualification tournament will be played traditionally in Rome with the Stella Azzurra Tournament from the 28th to 30th December. This year, the following teams will participate: Lietuvos Rytas, Fenerbahce Ülker, Montepaschi Siena, Benetton Treviso, Virtus Roma, Stella Azzurra, KK Zagreb and CSKA Moscow. The main attraction will of course be the Croatian team of Zagreb that will feature the 1994 born top talent Dario Saric. Another interesting news is that the teams are not allowed anymore to “loan” a foreign-licensed player for the competition as several participants did in the past to try-out some potential prospects.

The U18 Onil Tournament will be played from 28th to 30th of December and will feature next to the organizing Spanish team, Germany, Russia and Italy. The confirmed German Head Coach Kay Blümel made a his selection of 12 players for that tournament. The list includes most of the 2010 U17 National Team members plus some interesting newcomers like Mauricio Marin or Paul Zipser.

From the 4th January to the 6th January 2011, the second NIJT Qualification Tournament will be played in l’Hospitalet. The teams that will compete are Manresa, l’Hospitalet, FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, DKV Joventut, Khimki, Zalgiris Kaunas and Cedevita Zagreb. Next to the Spanish 93/94 born players, the main names to follow are probably Tauras Jogela, Marcus Eriksson, Nicholas Spires, Modou Mbaye, Augustinas Jankaitis or Alexander Zhigulin.

During the same time, the 2011 edition of the Baltic Sea Cup will be played in Tallinn. The tournament features the U16 and U18 National Teams of Sweden, Finland, Latvia and Estonia. Therefore, it may also be possible the that the Swedish prospects like Eriksson or Spires will play with their respective NT in Estonia and will not compete at the NIJT in l’Hospitalet.

UPDATE: we got informed by the organization team that from the 26th to the 28th December, an interesting tournament will be played in Kortrijk (Belgium) including the U18 National Teams of Belgium, England, Holland, Norway and Switzerland plus several good club teams with from France, England, Holland, Germany and Belgium.