ISTANBUL (Turkey) - Turkey's exciting nucleus of players that did so well at FIBA EuroBasket 2017 and reached the knockout round will have a lot more experience by the time they run onto the court at the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019 in China.

One of their terrific young talents, 24-year-old Cedi Osman, knows what is in front of Turkey since he played at the World Cup five years ago in Spain but another, Furkan Korkmaz, will still only be 22. It will be his first World Cup and he can hardly wait.

"Each team is trying to bring their best players to the World Cup just as we are," Korkmaz said to Trendbasket. "I'm very excited because we have a young team and a young core.

"As the Turkish national team, I think we have enough talent. But we can't forget to go step by step."

Turkey will compete in First Round Group E against the USA, Czech Republic and Japan.

"We'll play with the Czech Republic, Japan and the USA," Korkmaz said. "Of course, these are dangerous teams. This is no joke. We need to win every game. We have to take every game seriously for 40 minutes, then I'm sure we'll qualify to the Second Round."

"WE HOPE THE WORLD CUP WILL PROVIDE AN OPPORTUNITY FOR US TO GO TO THE OLYMPICS, WHICH WE HAVE NEVER ACHIEVED."- Turkish Basketball Federation President Hedo Turkoglu

If they finish in the top two of Group E, the Turks would advance to Group K in the Second Round. They would need another top two finish in that pool - which will also consist of the top two sides from a Group F (Greece, New Zealand, Brazil and Montenegro) - to reach the Quarter-Finals.

Turkish Basketball Federation (TBF) President Hedo Turkoglu, who had a legendary national team career that included a second-place finish at the 2010 World Cup, never got a chance to play at an Olympics.

He hopes Turkey will play well enough to qualify directly for the Tokyo 2020 Games, or at least have a high enough finish at the 32-team tournament to clinch a spot in one of the four FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournaments.

"We hope the FIBA World Cup will provide an opportunity for us to go to the Olympics, which we have never achieved," Turkoglu said. "This would be a great success in the history of Turkish basketball. Our women did it twice (London 2012 and Rio 2016). I want to congratulate them once again. I hope the World Cup brings us luck."

FIBA