LEB Gold, second Spanish Division, is used for ACB teams to help to grow up young prospects. Last season were Cornellá and Clínicas Rincón (farm teams of FC Barcelona and Málaga) with players like Xavi Rabaseda ('89, Fuenlabrada), Álex Hernández ('90, Assignia Manresa), Augusto César Lima ('91, Granada), Nikola Mirotic ('91, Real Madrid) and Rafa Freire ('92, Granada) principally. This season 2010-11 this trend went down, with Clínicas Rincón and UB La Palma, less young players each team and only few minutes during the games. Some examples of prospects in this situation were Christian Diaz ('92), Óscar Alvarado ('91) and Álex López ('91) from La Palma or Marc Pujols ('91), Álvaro Alarcón ('91) and Eric Jimenez ('90) from Girona.
One exception of this trend has been Clínicas Rincón, with only U-22 prospects and two of them U-18 with a lot of minutes during the competition. We are talking about Alejandro Abrines ('93) -at the pic- and african Maodo Malick Nguirane ('93). Both were new arrivals at Malaga's team, with Abrines coming from La Salle Mallorca U-18 and Nguirane from Torrejón at EBA league. Abrines is a 1.96 forward who can play also at shooting-guard position. He has a good long distance shooting range, scoring 30/89 (34%) from downtown during 30 games. He is capable to shoot quick from 8-9 meters easily. During the season he has improved his one on one with dribling to finish shooting from middle range, also with defensive skills, where he can improve a lot. He has a big jump capacity, coordination and long arms with quick hands to steal balls. He averages 15 minutes scoring 5.3 points. 24 points has been his season-high.
Nguirane is a 2.10 African center who arrived to Spain two years ago. He is a big physical talent who plays inside the paint, having great intimidation. Mostly he makes of split and pass situation and offense rebound. He can play one on one in low post with 1 or 2 dribles maximum, and is improving the middle range shot (3-4 m). With Lima and Sinanovic leaving to ACB he won a lot of protagonism and responsibility in LEB Gold. He played more than 15 minutes in the last 13 games, averaging 4.8 points and 6.3 rebounds and helping his team to stay one more year in the league.
Abrines will compete with Spanish NT in the Division "A" U-18 European Championship of this summer in Poland.
Enjoy with the footage of both playing this season in LEB Gold (link).
