COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Bring on the world.
That’s the mantra of the USA Men’s U17 World Championship squad that was finalized Tuesday evening at the Olympic Training Center by head coach Don Showalter and his staff.
The 12-man team is a who’s who of grassroots basketball, with several players already committed to college from the Class of 2013. Showalter, the veteran coach from Iowa, made painstaking choices to pare the roster to an even dozen. The top prep players age 17-and-under, will spend two additional weeks at the training center in preparation for the FIBA U17 World Championships, which tip off on June 29 in Kaunas, Lithuania. The final is July 8.
The Red, White and Blue are the defending gold medal winners, having captured the title in 2010. Showalter’s assistant coaches Mike Jones of DeMatha Catholic High in Hyattsville, Md., and Rich Gray, an AAU club mentor of the St. Louis Eagles.
The team includes (list alphabetically): Beejay Anya, DeMatha (Hyattsville, Md.); Joel Berry, Lake Highland Prep (Orlando); Stephen Domingo, Saint Ignatius Prep (San Francisco); Conner Frankamp, Wichita (Kan.) North; Dekari Johnson, Montverde (Fla.) Academy; Stanley Johnson, Mater Dei (Santa Ana, Calif.); Tyus Jones, Apple Valley (Minn.); Kendrick Nunn and Jabari Parker, both of Simeon (Chicago); Jahil Okafor, Whitney Young (Chicago); Johnathan Williams, Southwind (Memphis); and Justise Winslow, St. John’s School (Houston).
The event is held in even years, with the next championships in 2014. The Americans qualified for this event winning the 2011 FIBA Americas U16 Championship.
Showalter is anxious to start training his final 12 that is built on suffocating defense.
“We can play pressure defense. That’s really a strong point of this team,” he said. “Rebounding is something else that’s very much a plus for us, and then I really felt good about the progression we made offensively.
“Just after a couple of days we worked well together and I think our offense has really come around, and I feel very comfortable about it. Part of that is the familiarity from last year and last October. Our timing is much better. We’re reading plays a lot better.”
The USA will break training camp next week and then head off to Gran Canaria, Canary Islands for a tournament with U17 national teams from Spain, Latvia and Australia.
Once Showalter’s club arrives in the country on the Baltic Sea, the Americans open with Australia on June 29; then it’s Czech Republic on June, Egypt on July 1, France on July 3 and China on July 4 in preliminary round play. The top four teams from each group advance to the medal round, which tips on July 6 with the quarterfinals, the semifinals follow the next day.
According to sources, the final two chopped were Rondae Jefferson of Chester, Pa., and Dom Collier of Denver.
“You spend so much time getting down to your working number, and now it’s time to really work on developing a team aspect with these 12 players. You watch them, I know they’re lot more familiar with each other both on and off the court,” Showalter said.
“That helps to develop a team attitude that we need to take over to Lithuania.”
