USA U-19 update
Didn't see this posted. Tim hardaway jr lead all team USA players with 18 points on 7-18 shooting in the blowout loss to lithuania. The other big ten players on the team are meyers leonard (4 points) and keith appling (0).
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/750196-michigan-basketball-tim-harda…
http://www.usabasketball.com/mens/u19/11_mu19_exhgame_01.html
THJ is going to light the scoreboard up this year. we haven't had a scorer like this in a long time.
Michigan have plenty of scorers in the past.
but I think Evan Smotrycz will be the most improved player for this year.
Is there a reason we played Lithuania's U20 team with our U19 team? I don't suspect it makes a huge difference, but I'm just wondering what the reasoning behind that is.
Just to give USA a tough test against older players.
conversion
SMOTRYCZ
And he's not on the USA team
http://www.mgoblue.com/sports/m-baskbl/mtt/smotrycz_evan00.html
Dylan at UMHoops also posted an updated earlier. Better than Bleacher Report!
http://www.umhoops.com/2011/06/26/tim-hardaway-jr-scores-18-in-team-usa…
than Bleacher Report. This site should be banned whenever there's rumor or reporting from this site because it's basically useless yet people still quote it as if they're a professional site, they're not.
Well, it sucks that we got blown out as a team, but glad to see THJ play so well.
Hang in there, Tim, you guys can snap back from this! We appreciate all of you wearing the red, white, and blue, and representing our country to the world! :-)
I know the team played an opponent a whole year older, and this is not the point of the original post, but why in the world is the USA losing to Lithuania? Let alone by 29 points?
It used to be that college players from the USA could compete with anyone in the world . . .
Wasn't this the very first time the USA U-19 played a game? Maybe they need a little time to gel, and maybe the Lithuanian squad has been playing as a team for some time. Just a guess.
other countries have players to compete with the best of the best. It's not like the 80s or the 90s where USA dominates simply because they have superior athletes/players. This longer is not the case right now. Foreign players have professional experience and have played against successful college players in USA.
USA just got to oversea and went off to a slow start due to jet lag before coming back strong in the middle of the game. They dug themselves into a deep hole that they couldn't get out of it.
I think this makes the most sense. Beyond the jetlag, kids in Europe are playing in professional leagues as teenagers. If you recall one Robin Benzing (another HT to UMHoops), he's a kid from Germany who Beilein was recruiting. At the age of 19, he had been playing professionally for a year and was a star on Germany's U19 team.
If you look at the results of previous FIBA U-19 tournaments, I don't think the trend is as clearcut as you contend. In the last four tournaments, the U.S. squad finished 2nd (1999), 5th (2003) 2nd (2007), and 1st (2009). Are they expected to cakewalk to the gold this year? No. But I'm sure the U.S. team is considered one of the favorites.
From a potential standpoint they can be very good, but right now they are very unproven. This isn't a superstar loaded team, you have alot of young inconsistant players like joe jackson, jeremy lamb and keith appling. It's going to be a work in progress.
U-M has set up a Tim Hardaway and Team USA page at mgoblue.com. The page includes the schedule of games and links to game recaps and box scores, the team roster, and stats.