GER - Giffey latest piece of new German generation

LJUBLJANA (EuroBasket/FIBA Basketball World Cup) - The days of Dirk Nowitzki, Chris Kaman and other veterans leading the German national team are over. Now it's time for Germany's next generation of talent to step up at EuroBasket 2013. And Niels Giffey is part of Deutschland's next group of up-and-comers.

The 22-year-old will make his senior national team debut in international competition in Ljubljana, where Germany were drawn into Group A with France, Belgium, Ukraine, Great Britain and Israel.

"This is incredible, making the big step to the senior team. It's really different than playing on a junior team,” said Giffey, who is one of six players on Germany's roster aged 24 or younger.

And while he may be new to the senior team, he has already collected his share of successes along the way, especially in 2011.

In April 2011, he helped the University of Connecticut to the NCAA collegiate title, joining a rare group of Germans to win an NCAA crown - one of them being his former coach Henrik Rodl.

"To be up there with him as one of the only guys in Germany with a (US) national collegiate championship is really a great thing. Now I'm trying to catch up with his career," said Giffey.

During the summer of 2011, the 2.01m swingman played a leading role in Germany taking a best-ever fifth-place finish at the U20 European Championship.

Giffey has become a bigger part of every team he has played on since his UConn days and learning the game for the first two seasons under legendary coach Jim Calhoun.

"He helped me to develop a lot. In a weird way he gave me a lot of confidence. People say they break you down and then build you back up, and that's the type of guy he is,” said the 22-year-old, who already has had the invaluable experience of playing EuroBasket warm-ups against elite players like Nicolas Batum, Rudy Fernandez, Mirza Teletovic, Vassilis Spanoulis and Jeffery Taylor.

"It's a good way to improve and it's definitely going to help me a lot…Maybe this year I can step up and be more of a scoring threat and one of the leaders on our team."

Germany will likely need Giffey to come up with some points since Heiko Schaffartzik, Robin Benzing and Tibor Pleiss are the only other real scoring threats for Frank Menz's team.

Regardless, Giffey is confident of Germany's chances in the group.

"There are a lot of beatable nations in this group. I believe that we should make it to the next round," he said.

"All of us are young guys. We don't need to rest a lot or longer time to recover. We should play an up-tempo game each and every day and get some old guys sweating a little bit."

For full and in-depth coverage of EuroBasket 2013, go to the official website http://www.eurobasket2013.org.

FIBA