USA Basketball names Women’s U19 World Cup Team

The twelve-player team features 10 former gold medalists

Thirty talented young women have been narrowed to 12, as USA Basketball announced the squad for July’s Women’s U19 World Cup. All twelve members of the team have previous experience with USA Basketball, ten are previous gold-medal winners, and two have won NCAA titles.

The invitees met at the United States Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado on May 16. After undergoing six trial sessions over four days, the team was narrowed down to the final 12 on May 19 by the USA Basketball Women’s Junior National Team Committee. George Washington head coach Jennifer Rizzotti chaired the committee.

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“A lot goes into it, these are the best players in the country,” Rizzotti was quoted in the committee’s press release. “There’s a great level of diversity, experience and age. You have college kids that have the experience of being coached by a college coach, but you have a lot of really young players that have a lot of USA Basketball experience. As a committee, we try to find not just 12 of the best players, but the best mix of players that we can give to Jeff and his staff to help them win a gold medal. The harder they compete, the harder they make our job. It’s a good thing, but to have to walk into the room and cut 18 kids that really came out here and competed really hard is a tough job.”

The team will return to training camp in just under a month when they will be coached by a staff led by Louisville head coach Jeff Walz. Walz will be assisted by Natasha Adair of Delaware and Cori Close of UCLA.

“First, I want to say thank you to the committee,” he said in the press release. “What a difficult job they had trying to get down to a final 12. I’m really impressed with all the young women who came out here to be a part of the trials.

“And now that we’re down to 12, I’m looking forward to getting to know them before we come back here on July 5 to start practice. It’s a versatile group. We’ve got some very strong post players, some very dynamic guards. I think we have a chance to do a lot of different things on the basketball court.”

The U.S. team, which is ranked No. 1 in the junior youth rankings, will attend training camp from July 5-10. Afterward, they will travel to Tokyo, Japan to scrimmage against Japan’s U19 National Team from July 13-15. More scrimmages will be held against Germany and Argentina once the team arrives in Bangkok, Thailand.

The tournament will be held in Bangkok from July 20-28. The U.S. will begin play in group C during the preliminary round. They will tip off against No. 7 Australia on July 20, then play No. 15 South Korea the following day.  They will wind up preliminary games on July 23 against No. 14 Hungary.

The 2019 US Women’s U19 World Cup Team

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