REGENSBURG (David Hein's Eye on the Future) - The 2015 FIBA U19 World Championship tips off in nine days and one of the big questions is if the United States can repeat their title from 2013 in Prague.

The answer is… well, it would mean Sean Miller did a great coaching job.

Let’s first list the main contenders for the title at this summer's highlight in Heraklion (Crete). Of course there are the USA as well as U18 European champions Turkey to go with Croatia, Serbia and Greece. Just to be inclusive, we can add Italy and Spain and two teams hit hard by absentees Australia and Canada.

So, the question was about the USA. New head coach Miller takes over the U19 team from Billy Donovan, who has left for the greener pastures of the NBA and the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Miller was one of Donovan's assistant coaches at the 2014 FIBA Americas U18 Championship. But this will be the first time the University of Arizona boss will head coach a team at the FIBA level.

Sure, the Americans faced Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Dominican Republic and Canada at the FIBA Americas U18 tournament last summer, but Miller has not yet seen the likes of Croatia, Serbia and Turkey, who play a different style of basketball - with players who have been playing together for their country at the youth ranks for many years already.

That is something Miller cannot really say about his team. The coach announced his final 12-man roster on 17 June - just more than a month after taking over the post on 14 May and 15 days after naming the 24 invitees to the training camp, which started on 12 June.

Miller now faces the task of figuring out how his 12 players best mesh together and what kind of rotation might work. One positive is that Miller chose five players who teamed up to win the title at last summer’s FIBA U17 World Championship and three who took the crown at the 2014 FIBA Americas U18 Championship - all of them playing major roles last summer.

But Miller does not have a lot of time to mold his team. The Americans are due to leave for Greece on 21 June, with the U19 Worlds starting on 27 June. The USA will get in a friendly game or two before the tournament tips off, but the team most likely will not really know how to play with one another that well in its Group A opener against Iran.

And then on 28 June is the tantalising showdown with Croatia, a match-up many had believed would be a preview of the Final. But the breakdown of the schedule means that unless one of the two teams finishes third in the group - Egypt is the fourth team in Group A - then USA and Croatia could meet again at the latest in the Semi-Finals.

As talented as the group of American players is - and despite being a young group with nine of the dozen players not yet having played college basketball - this group of Croatians is very experienced.

Most of the core of the group cruised through the 2014 U18 European Championship until losing to host side Turkey in the Semi-Finals before bouncing back to make the podium. Many of the Croatians have been playing together at the youth national team ranks for three summers already and gone through highs and lows.

They are also high level players at the club level. Marko Arapovic and Lovro Mazalin both played in the Euroleague this past season with Arapovic also being named to Croatia's senior national team preliminary roster for EuroBasket 2015.

Five other players earned minutes this season in the highly-competitive Adriatic League while Dragan Bender practiced all season with Euroleague giants Maccabi Tel Aviv - playing meanwhile in the Israeli second division.

The USA-Croatia game will come 16 days after the start of Miller's training camp. That is not much time to bring a rookie international head coach and a largely new team together on the same page to compete at such a high level.

A Round of 16 contest against perhaps China or Argentina would await the Americans, with possibly a team like Italy, Canada or Australia lurking in the Quarter-Finals. And if the USA reach the last four, they could once again face off against Croatia - on 4 July. Now that would be some fireworks.

Let's say Miller can guide his bunch past Croatia on the US Independence Day, then there is a battle-tested team that made it through the other half of the bracket and will be looking to dethrone the champs in the title game.

And should the USA end up hoisting the trophy to the heavens over Greece on 5 July, then Miller will have done one heck of a job.

David Hein

FIBA

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