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Future Tar Heel Lanie Grant dished out a game-high six assists as the United States moved one win away from a likely championship-game clash with Canada with another blowout victory at the FIBA U16 Women’s Americas Championship in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico.
Ian Jackson, a Carolina commitment who is the No. 3 player in the Class of 2024, is one of four rising high school seniors to earn a spot on the United States team that will play in the FIBA U19 Men’s World Cup in Debrecen, Hungary.
In addition to UNC playing UConn in the Basketball Hall of Fame Women’s Showcase, the Tar Heels will play in an eight-team tournament with Iowa and star Caitlin Clark. The Tar Heels are one of eight teams in the Gulf Coast Showcase, a tournament that will reportedly include UNC, Iowa and Kansas State. The tournament hasn’t announced its field, so the other five teams for the event aren’t known yet.
The United States team rolled into the medal round with three blowout victories at the FIBA U16 Women’s Americas Championship, and future Tar Heel Lanie Grant returned for Thursday’s win over Mexico after missing a game. After Grant scored 12 points in the Americans’ 124–39 Tuesday victory over Puerto Rico, she was one of several players from other teams, all staying at the same hotel in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, who started feeling sick.
The inexplicable absence of Carolina junior Mac Horvath from the All-ACC first team continues to look like a massive injustice as more postseason awards roll out. On Thursday, Horvath made the Perfect Game All-America first team in one of the three outfield spots three days after the American Baseball Coaches Association named him to the All-Atlantic Region First Team.
Carolina senior guard Deja Kelly will try out next week for one of the four remaining spots on the United States Women’s AmeriCup team, which includes LSU star Angel Reese. The 5–8 Kelly travels to Colorado Springs, Colo., on Wednesday, where the team’s training camp for the competition begins next Thursday at the U.S. Olympic Training Center. The FIBA Women’s AmeriCup is July 1–9 in León, Mexico.
Under Coach Courtney Banghart, North Carolina is becoming a nationally respected program, and more evidence of that comes next season when the Tar Heels play perennial national power Connecticut for the first time in nearly 12 years in a showcase tripleheader. UNC (22–11 last season) takes on UConn (31–6) at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn., on Sunday, Dec. 10, as part of the Basketball Hall of Fame Women’s Showcase, with perennial national power South Carolina (36–1) facing Utah (27–5) and UCLA (27–10) going up against Florida State (23–10) in that facility the same day. Starting times and television will be announced later, with tickets going on sale Sept. 8.
Two Carolina seniors, guard Lexi Donarski and forward Alyssa Ustby, were named Thursday to the United States women’s U24 three-on-three team. The team will compete in select three-on-three events this summer with the goal of qualifying for the FIBA 3×3 Women’s Series final in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, on Sept 16 and 17.
Cam Johnson has gone from a tumultuous season to an offseason of uncertainty, but he’s not planning to sit around and see where his NBA career goes next. Johnson, a restricted free agent, has committed to play for the United States in the FIBA World Cup in the Philippines, Japan and Indonesia from Aug. 25 to Sept. 10, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, who reported that former UNC center Walker Kessler of the Utah Jazz also has committed to play for the team.
When Carolina makes the national championship game, it used to be a good bet that a few key players from that team would be around two seasons later. That may have been the conventional wisdom in the past, but in an era when players can transfer and not sit out a year, you can’t assume much from year to year.
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