The USA Men’s Basketball Teams today announced updates which included players who are committed or thinking about committing to the University of Arizona.
The news came down today that three Arizona related players were named to the training camp roster for Coach Miller’s USA Men’s U19 basketball team. Arizona commits Allonzo Trier (2015) and T.J. Leaf were both invited to the USA National U19 training camp and both will get some great experience with Coach Miller and vice versa.
In addition, Sean Miller has an offer out to recruit Josh Jackson who is the third Arizona related player invited to training camp. Josh has also been offered by Kentucky, Duke, UCLA and seven other teams.
#arizonawildcats freshman Allonzo Trier and commit T.J. Leaf invited to USA Basketball's U19 training camp.
— Bruce Pascoe (@BrucePascoe) June 2, 2015
Sean Miller, along with Arizona basketball athletic trainer Justin Kokoskie, helped coach the U19 USA Men’s team to a gold medal in the 2013 U19 World Championship gold medal last year.
Last years gold medal team also included star Stanley Johnson as the tournament MVP. The year earlier, 2014 NBA lottery pick Aaron Gordon played on the team and also earned an MVP title.
According to Arizona Athletics, “Trier helped the USA qualify for the 2015 FIBA U19 World Championship by compiling a 5-0 record and winning gold at the 2014 FIBA Americas U18 Championship. He started all five games for the U.S., averaging 12.6 points and shooting 62.1 percent from the floor.” So Allonzo has experience in this arena.
There are 24 players in the U19 training camp which takes place June 12-26 and requires two practices a day. After camp the list will be reduced down to 12 players for the final roster and be announced on June 15th. This year the U19 event is scheduled for June 27-July 5 in Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
As far as younger high school players who have offers from Sean Miller, Jalen Hill made the final Men’s U16 roster as announced today by USA Basketball.
http://www.usab.com/~/media/2d3fab453daf4759a5a9e44dff945555.ashx
The 29 players invited took part in training camp which included 10 extremely competitive training sessions. The list of 29 was reduced down to 17 finalists on May 30, then today, the final the 12-member 2015 USA Basketball Men’s U16 National Team roster was announced.
Both Southern California Arizona recruits Jaylen Hands (Mater Dei, same as Stanley Johnson) and Jalen Hill (Corona Centennial H.S) made the list of 17, but only Jalen Hill made the final list of 12.
The head coach for the USA U16 National Team is Don Showalter. Coach Showalter explains how hard it was to cut his roster, “It was not an easy decision to make. Those five guys put a lot of their heart and soul into those practices and with anything, you hope they learn from it and come back next year as a better player. I really like what we’ve done so far and now we have it down to 12.”
The U16 Men’s USA Coach discusses his roster and the team’s hope to bring home a fourth consecutive gold medal in the video 2015 MU16 Team Named.
Former Arizona Wildcat Miles Simon is also coaching the U16 team, so Jalen will get a taste of the Wildcat mentality.
https://twitter.com/milessimon/status/606952191698403328
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The 2015 FIBA U16 USA Men’s team tournament is tentatively set for June 10th. The USA team is a part of Group A and their first game is against Puerto Rico on June 10. Their next opponent is the Dominican Republic on June 11th and then Brazil on June 12th. After pool play, the teams will be seeded, then the Semi finals will be played on June 13th, the championship on June 14th.
The team will leave for Argentina to the 2015 FIBA Americas U16 Championship after training twice daily at the United States Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs through Saturday morning.
We wish all participants and coaches success in the FIBA tournament, bring home the gold!
Beardown!