CAIRO, Egypt—When USA Basketball’s U19 national team defeated Lithuania, 89-66, in a pre-tournament scrimmage here last night prior to the start of the FIBA youth World Cup competition, it bright back memories of his own Kentucky basketball team for head coach John Calipari.
“We’ve seen this before at Kentucky,’’ Calipari said. “We’re used to always getting a team’s best shot before we’d eventually wear them down.’’
Then, he looked at his starting center Austin Wiley of SEC rival Auburn.
“Isn’t that right Austin,’’ he said with a smile.
The Americans looked disjointed defensively early, leading Lithuania, one of the most seasoned teams in Europe, just 49-47, at half. But then the light bulb went on and got brighter as soon as Calipari began to raise his voice. The u19 team held Lithuania, which had been playing together since March and had played 14 scrimmages before arriving here, to just 19 points in the second half.
“It’s hard putting a team together in five days,’’ Calipari said.
The 12-man U19 team has been together for less than a week since final cuts were made in Colorado Springs. This was the team’s first international scrimmage since arriving here in the desert Tuesday morning. They are still figuring it out.
But we learned some things from the first scrimmage. This has the potential to be an aggressive, balanced team. he USA scoring featured three players in double figures. Kentucky freshman forward PJ Washington scored
a team-high 18 points, while Kentucky freshman guard Hamidou Diallo added 17 and Wiley scored 15.
“It felt good to get out there and get back on my feet after the flights. I feel like we played well, but there are a bunch of things that we can get better at,” said the 6-foot-5 Diallo. “I felt good. That’s the first time in an official game in a long time, and I felt good. I think I played well, but I’ve got to get better on a bunch of things, I’m still a little rusty, but I felt like I played well and helped my team come up
with a W.”
The USA’s scoring was rounded out by eight points from point/forward Cameron Reddish of of the Westtown Pa. School; seven points apiece from Maryland sophomore guard Kevin Huerter and high school senior forward Louis King of Hudson Catholic, N.J. H.S.
“I thought we looked a little sluggish in the first half, and I thought in the second half our pressure and our athleticism kind of wore them down,” Calipari said. “But, our execution is not great. Our biggest issue right now is
defensively we don’t talk enough, and they haven’t been together long enough to really know how we wanted to play. I’ve got 10 days to get these guys talking more, playing off one another more. I’m happy were doing a couple scrimmages, so we understand how it is.
The 6-8, 252-pound Wiley is an accomplished finisher and needs to get the ball more often in the low post. Reddish is the most talented of the four high school seniors on the roster and arguably the most versatile player on the team with the ability to play all five positions. Washington has a scorer’s mentality. Georgia Tech sophomore guard Josh Okogie could emerge as a defensive stopper on the ball in the press. Diallo still has the same electricity we saw last year on the FIBA U18 Americas tournament gold medal team in Argentina and Huerter is just as valuable a shooter as he was for the U18s last summer.
This team is still a work in progress. Diallo, Huerter, Wiley, Washington and high school senior guard Immanual Quickly are the only players with international experience on either the U17 or U18 youth development team.
We should learn more Thursday night when the U.S. plays France in a second scrimmage. The tournament opens Saturday when the Americans will play Iran in pool play.
