Definitely won't be a top, but high level tournament. Bilbao will held from tomorrow to July 24th a new edition of the U20 Division "A" European Championship, an event clearly affected by the U19 World Championship played last week in Latvia. A huge group of prospects won't be in Spain because they already were in the other competition, and the federations decided to give rest to them most of cases. Big absences for this reason? Lithuanian Jonas Valanciunas ('92), Latvian Davis Bertans ('92) and Russian Dmitry Kulagin ('92). But other ones haven't travelled either to Bilbao, making the level of the championship decrease ostensibly. Serbian Dejan Musli ('91) -injured-, Turkish Enes Kanter ('92) or german Philipp Neumann ('92) are some of them. Our favorite? France. Team coached by Jean-Aimé Toupane will try to repeat last year's achievement, winning the Gold medal. Won't be easy without Albicy, Lacombe, Tanghe or Leonard, but they are good and talented enough to avoid hosts climb to the top. The addition of the 1992 generation of France has intriguing pearls. 6'6'' SF Evan Fournier ('92), who participated this season in the Nike Hoop Summit of Portland (Oregon), exploted in 2009 in the U-18 EC at Metz, being selected in the All-Tournament Team after winning the Silver medal. He has been increasing his stock, and should be the french leader. 6'5'' PG Leo Westermann ('92), from ASVEL, and big players Joffrey Lauvergne ('91) -made it to the Adidas Eurocamp- and Rudy Gobert ('92) are other prospects with big potential. A few days ago they won a tournament in Logroño (Spain), with a 3-0 record infront Turkey, Russia and Spain. 

 

Spain is the other squad that has more chances to win the trophy. They have in the roster the biggest prospect: Montenegrin born Nikola Mirotic ('91), at the pic. He took the spanish passport some weeks ago after a great season with Real Madrid, making big performances in ACB and Euroleague also. He will earn the MVP Trophy if nothing strange happens. The NBA draftee will try to lead his teammates to the Gold, helped by Joventut Badalona guard Josep Franch ('91). They play at home, and they have experience. The rest of teams are at least one step under. But we will see. Italy, with Alessandro Gentile ('92) and Nicolò Melli ('91), and Turkey, with Can Mutaf ('91) and Furkan Aldemir ('91), can arrive far. But we cannot forget either prospects like Marko Todorovic ('92) and Nikola Ivanovic ('94), from Montenegro, Croatian Boris Barac ('92), Greek Linos Chrysikopoulos ('92), Serbian Nemanja Nedovic ('91) or Slovenian Edo Muric ('91). And a good question: Will Serbian Branislav Djekic ('91) make a step forward?

 

Our predictions:

 

Champion: France

MVP: Nikola Mirotic (Spain)

All-Tournament Team: Josep Franch (Spain), Alessandro Gentile (Italy), Evan Fournier (France), Nikola Mirotic (Spain) and Joffrey Lauvergne (France).       

 

Photo: Jonatan Gonzalez

 

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