TINTON FALLS, N.J. — Scottie Lewis, the 6-foot-5 wing from the Ranney (N.J.) School and the Team Rio AAU program, is focusing on two SEC schools at this point — Florida and Kentucky — but has no timetable for a decision.

With NBA training camps and preseason play right around the corner, the expectations are high for several young European players — such as Luka Doncic and Elie Okobo — to make an immediate impact on their new teams. While franchises have more information than ever before regarding potential draft prospects, including their stats, size, and athletic measurements, it’s difficult to tell what information actually matters. Were Mikal Bridge’s stats just a product of the Villanova system? Should we be worried about Doncic’s shooting? Was the beginning of Trae Young’s season just an anomaly? 

This is how you know the Western Conference has reached a new level of absurd, unquantifiable level of difficulty: LeBron James joined the Los Angeles Lakers, and the yellow and gold are projected to finish somewhere in the middle of the standings. 

Beginning on Sunday — the same day the NFL season officially began and the U.S. Open officially ended — college basketball coaches fanned out across the country to check on and meet with their top recruiting targets in the classes of 2019 and beyond.

Good news, basketball fans: the EuroLeague season starts October 11, and you can watch every game on FloHoops.com.

Basketball is like Chance the Rapper.

There has perhaps never been a more hyped European draft prospect than 19-year old Slovenian superstar Luka Doncic. After leading Real Madrid to a EuroLeague championship while earning MVP and Final Four MVP honors along the way, the youngster convinced many that his accomplishments in the second-best league in the world all but assured him the top overall pick. However, as draft night got closer, criticisms aimed at his athleticism and shooting led him to slip to third, before he was eventually traded to the Dallas Mavericks for the fifth pick (Trae Young) and a future first-round pick.

NEW YORK — Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim believes Darius Bazley would have helped his NBA stock rise more by spending the upcoming season playing for the Orange in the ultra-competitive Atlantic Coast Conference instead of opting not to play organized ball at all.

By Austin Green

Kentucky and Duke both went undefeated on their recent foreign trips, with the Wildcats going 4-0 in the Bahamas and the Blue Devils 3-0 in Canada.