Colorado Springs, CO – The next generation of USA Basketball talent was on show yesterday and today as 152 participants congregated for the next cycle of talent selection for the USA U16 Women’s National Team that will participate in the FIBA Americas tournament June 16 to June 22 in wintery Puerto Aysen, Chile next month.
Even though it’s only the end of the first full day of workouts and drills, it’s easy to see who the leading contenders for roster spots are. As usual these sessions divide the group into two sections with each given the same drills and work over one hour and 30-minute sessions.
This is also the post-Azzi Fudd era as the look for the next great young player takes place as Fudd ages out of the group as she heads into her junior year while recovering from her brutal acl-mcl injury at the USAB 3X3 U18 Finals here back in April. Fudd was expected to lead the selected USA 3X3 team and also make the USA u19 National Team playing at the FIBA U19 World Championships in Bangkok Thailand at the end of July. Despite the injury (on the same weekend as Breanna Stewart’s Achilles injury) Fudd is still expected to be a future cornerstone of the USA pipeline.
These trials are about filling the pipeline after Fudd. And, on first look at the list of participants this might be the best and most deep big forward-post group in the history of the U16s. There are 32 players from 6-foot 2-inches up to 6-7 and they are some of the best across the USA. The numbers and the talent means difficult selections for the USA which needs to start re-stocking the pipeline. Many of the USAB U19 Team headed to Bangkok will have many of holdovers from the 2018 gold medal USA U17 National team. I thought the USAB U18s had holes from point guard to center and many of those team members elected to stay on campus.
What makes this group important is the fact that the USA Women’s National Team after the 2020 Tokyo Olympics will need to also fill massive holes on their roster. While these player won’t impact that level immediately there are about 3-4 players who one day could be on that team. That’s more than past years when looking long term.
The other consideration as to the level of talent is the impact of the 32 Blue Star 30 camp participants who are also here from the class of 2021 down to the class of 2023. Overall the breakdown is 52 (2021), 74 (2022) and 26 (2023).
A number of “30s” players are back here from the USA 3X3 trials as Raven Johnson (2021, GA and from the winning BlueStar30 FBC team), Payton Verhulst (2021, KS), Aailyah Moore (2021, OK), Kayla Cooper (2022, TX), Amari DeBerry (2021, NY), Ayanna Patterson (2022, IN) and K.K. Bransford (2022, OH),
Instead of posting all the names (which are available via download from the USA Basketball site https://www.usab.com/womens/u16/roster.aspx ) I will wait until tomorrow to post the list of players I feel could make it to Sunday morning. Right now I have a list of 27-35 players making it to the next-to-final workout. Because of the depth at the forward, post and even some of the other positions it would be fair to say that this year’s 2nd team selection would also dominate in FIBA international play.
Unlike average years where the top players are easy to distinguish at each position there’s really only three who should make the team based on play so far: 6-7 post Lauren Betts (2022, CO), Olivia Miles (2021, NJ) and Payton Verhulst (2021, KS) as their skill sets and maturity of play pushes them to Sunday afternoon.
As noted in the past, most of the 152 participants who are here will get some level of college scholarship as there are few who don’t belong here. Kudos to USAB for making sure the best are here – now they have to figure out how to split hairs.
