REGENSBURG (David Hein's Eye on the Future) - The World Select Team was released this week for the 2014 Nike Hoop Summit and the international squad is noticeably heavy on players from North American high schools.

With half of the 10-man roster playing for high schools in the United States or Canada, the World team will shoot for their third straight victory on April 12 when they play the USA at the 17th annual Hoop Summit at the Moda Center in Portland.

For comparison, last spring’s World team had just three high schoolers – Andrew Wiggins, Joel Embiied and Karl Towns Jr. The Dominican Republic big man Towns is returning to coach Roy Rana’s World Team after collecting seven points, four rebounds, four assists and two steals in the 112-98 win, which was the first time the internationals won back-to-back games.

The USA holds an 11-5 advantage in the Hoop Summit history.

Towns, who will be heading to the University of Kentucky next season, will likely be called upon to play a bigger role for Rana’s team this time around.

The Canadian coach has some good depth in the low post with Canadian Trey Lyles, who starred at the 2013 FIBA U19 World Championship and is Kentucky-bound as well after playing high school in Indiana; Serbia’s Nikola Jokic , Switzerland’s Clint Capela and Damien Inglis of France.

The fourth European in the game – there were six in last year’s game – is Turkey’s James Metecan Birsen. Reports say fellow Turk Cedi Osman was supposed to come but was stricken from the roster due to an injury to Dogus Balbay at Turkish club Anadolu Efes.

Rounding out the other high schoolers are Democratic Republic of Congo’s Emmanuel Mudiay, Brandone Francis of the Dominican Republic and Jamal Murray, who is attending a high school in his native Canada.

The other player on the squad is China’s Gao Shang, who averaged 18.8 points, 5.9 rebounds and 2.8 assists at the 2013 U19 Worlds including games of 30 and 33 points.

Let’s briefly go through the World squad, which features three top-10 recruits from the 2014 high school class (Towns, Lyles and Mudiay). Lyles is a strong, skilled low post player while Jokic, who broke out at the 2013 U19 Worlds, is an old school power forward averaging 11 points and six rebounds for Mega Vezura in Serbia. Capela is the long and athletic big man who always seems to make these World teams and leave big impressions.

It will be interesting to see what kind of role the physically-mature Inglis plays in Portland after usually being a leader on the youth French national team but only being a role player – understandably for his age – for ProA team Roanne. Birsen, who gets some minutes for Fenerbahce, also plays on the wing and can control the ball, though he’s not nearly as physical as Inglis.

Playing the off guard will be the Florida recruit Francis, an explosive slasher who played for the Dominican Republic’s senior team at the Jenaro “Tuto” Marchand Continental Cup in Puerto Rico last August.

Mudiay, who is bound for Southern Methodist, will likely be the only true point guard and will be in charge of handling the intense USA pressure defense while combo guard Murray will help out as the second playmaker.

If you happen to miss this game – and I would recommend you don’t – you will likely see many of these players quite a bit in the future, and many of them in the NBA.

An impressive total of 151 Hoop Summit alumni have been drafted into the NBA as of 2013.

David Hein

FIBA

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