WARSAW (Poland) - Jeremy Sochan is on Poland's 17-man preliminary list of players ahead of the country's FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament campaign in Valencia.
The power forward, with a couple of NBA seasons under his belt in San Antonio since being drafted ninth overall in 2022, will bring plenty of athleticism, skill and smarts to the team if he is ultimately among the 12.
Poland's 17-man squad for FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament Spain
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Aleksander Balcerowski | Adrian Bogucki | Aleksander Dziewa | Jakub Garbacz |
Daniel Gołębiowski | Andrzej Mazurczak | Michał Michalak | Igor Milicić |
Jakub Nizioł | Andrzej Pluta | Mateusz Ponitka | AJ Slaughter |
Jeremy Sochan | Michał Sokołowski | Mikołaj Witliński | Jarosław Zyskowski |
Przemysław Żołnierewicz |
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Sochan has not played for Poland since February 21, 2021, when he joined the team for a window of the FIBA EuroBasket 2022 Qualifiers. In that game that was played in Valencia, Spain, he had 18 points in an 88-81 Poland victory.
Poland linchpins Mateusz Ponitka, AJ Slaughter, Michael Sokolowski, Olek Balcerowski - four holdovers from the team that reached the Quarter-Finals of the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019 in China five years ago and also led the team to fourth place at EuroBasket 2022 - are included.
Ponitka, Sokolowski and Balcerowski were the leaders in the team that fired Poland to victory at the FIBA Olympic Pre-Qualifying Tournament last summer that they jointly hosted with Estonia.
"Together with my staff, we have selected 17 players that will attend the training camp in Wroclaw," said coach Igor Milicic.
"Twelve of this group will play at the qualifying tournament in Valencia. Preparations start on Monday, (and) some players - because they are still playing in their leagues - will join us after a few days. We have a very important task ahead of us. There is a lot of hard work ahead of us, but we have a specific goal and we want to achieve it."
Poland have a very challenging couple of Group B games coming up in Valencia against the Bahamas on July 3 and Finland on July 4.
A top-two finish is needed to advance, with only the winner of the OQT clinching a spot at the Olympics. To get ready for the OQT, Poland have scheduled games against Greece, Brazil, New Zealand and the Philippines.
FIBA