Team USA U19 World Cup Team Filled With Gold Medal Talent

Nobody said the process would be easy, but decisions had to be made. The 2017 USA Men’s U19 World Cup Team was set on Thursday by head coach John Calipari and is now officially ready to compete for a third consecutive gold medal in Cairo, Eygpt, from July 1-9.

The 12-member squad is comprised of four high school prospects, two incoming college freshmen, and six players who have been enrolled in college at least one semester. It also includes six athletes with international experience, including three who helped Team USA quality for the FIBA U19 World Cup.

Despite the successes over half of the roster has had in college, one thing is certain: All 12 of them were dominant at the prep level. The high school highlights in the video go in order of the list below.

TEAM USA U19 WORLD CUP ROSTER:

Hamidou Diallo (Kentucky)
Carsen Edwards (Purdue)
Kevin Huerter (Maryland)
Louis King (Class of 2018)
Romeo Langford (2018 Flo40 No. 3)
Brandon McCoy (2017 Flo40 No. 8, UNLV)
Josh Okogie (Georgia Tech)
Payton Pritchard (Oregon)
Immanuel Quickley (2018 Flo40 No. 11)
Cameron Reddish (2018 Flo40 No. 4)
PJ Washington (2017 Flo40 No. 13, Kentucky)
Austin Wiley (Auburn)

“Every player on this team can play different positions and has different abilities,” Calipari said in a press release with USA Basketball. “Whether they’re a point guard and a scorer or whether they’re wing and a point guard or a wing and a power player. We only took two true bigs, which is kind of dangerous. But, we decided that if we had to, we could go small and go zone. We could do it offensively, and if they didn’t have a real big guy, we’d just go, ‘P.J., you just guard the guy. We’re going to go pick-and-rolls, inside pick-and-rolls and slips and you’re going to go play like a three anyway.’

“This is a really hard process. But it wasn’t just me selecting these guys. USA Basketball is involved. This was done by committee, and it went back and forth. Everybody was giving opinions. We went to midnight. and we still couldn’t make the final decision. We had to sleep on it.

Among the first cuts were Desmond Bane (TCU), Chaundee Brown (2017 Flo40 No. 39, Wake Forest), Marques Bolden (Duke), Devon Daniels (NC State), Malachi Flynn (Washington State), Charlie Moore (Kansas), De'Anthony Melton (USC), Shamorie Ponds (St. John's), and Kris Wilkes (2017 Flo40 No. 21, UCLA).

“Having to select the first group (finalists) was really hard and we ended up keeping three or four more guys, because we weren’t ready to make a decision on those three or four. And then, we had couple of injuries, which ended up moving that number down. But, at the end of the day, there were three players for one spot and we had to choose one. We looked and said, ‘OK. Who, if they had to, could help us?’ And that’s who we went with.”

The second round of cuts included Bol Bol (2018 Flo40 No. 17), Jordan Brown (2018 Flo40 No. 5), Kevin Knox (2017 Flo40 No. 6, Kentucky), Chuma Okeke (Auburn), and Mitchell Robinson (2017 Flo40 No. 7, Western Kentucky).

Joining Calipari’s staff for the trip are Tad Boyle (Colorado) and Danny Manning (Wake Forest).