As I am following a lot of European Youth basketball through my blog www.europeanprospects.com, here is a short recap of some interesting stories from the last days.
The first news is the starting cooperation between the Euroleague and the City of L’Hospitalet Junior Tournament. This is a first support of more to come by the Euroleague in order to implement a qualifying process for their own Nike International Junior Tournament that is held yearly during the Final Four. The tournament, that features the main Spanish Junior teams as well as some of the best European basketball powerhouses in youth basketball like CSKA Moscow, FMP Zeleznik, Cibona Zagreb or Pau-Orthez.
Another very important rendez-vous for youth basketball enthousiasts and scouts is the Albert Schweitzer Turnier in Mannheim. This year´s edition will feature a very bright choice of Junior National teams as the following 16 nations announced their participation: Argentina, Australia, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Canada, Croatia, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden, Spain, South Africa, Turkey, USA and Germany. Besides Serbia, this is nearly a choice of all the best nations possible in International competitions.The 24th edition takes place from March 22nd to March 29th 2008 in Mannheim, Germany.
The German champions of Youth basketball Urspring Academy actually participate on two High School tournaments in the United States. Jonathan Givony from Draftexpress who assistedto some of the games of the Amare Stoudemire Invitational reported
They won the first game surprisingly. Were down by a bunch and then put on a fullcourt press to make up an 11 point deficit. Then they played Dominguez very well in the first half, but couldn’t really score enough in the 2nd half to keep pace. They look like they surely belong here.
Also the head coach of Urspring Academy Ralph Junge seems to be pretty happy about the performances of his kids as he reports.
One day after the disapointing loss against Dominguez, Urspring played their best game so far. The team around Superprospect Jeremy Tylor, who is considered to be the best player of his generation in the United States, has been defeated after a fantastic second half 70-47. We will play now against Norcross (Georgia) who are listed #8 in the US and have with Al-Farouq Aminu an extremely athletic forward with fantastic skills. This game will be decisive about the fifth place of this tournament.
Milan Macvan, about whom we talked already some weeks ago, now signed his first professional contract. But surprisingly, it was not with his home team of FMP Zeleznik, but he moved to Hemofarm Vrsac where he joined his Junior NT fellows and also his Junior NT head coach.
