Summer Nationalism Wrap-Up

So the international basketball/football season is officially over at Northwestern with John Shurna's New Zealand trip ending with gold, so, let's analyze what all this flag-bearing means for NU, player by player. 

John Shurna: Covered this decently yesterday, but hey. It's good to see that he's capable of being a contributing member on a gold-medal team where everybody involved is of a fairly high skill level. It's a little difficult to interpret how his numbers relate to his development as a player - first off, small sample sizes and mixed competition. Second off, he was playing power forward - hence the high rebounding and blocks numbers, whereas at NU, he'll be a three. Third off, the US team was all about the three ball - Shurna shot 18 threes and 17 twos, and that's less of a reflection of Shurna transforming into a jacker than it is a reflection of USA's strategy - four players shot more threes than twos, an additional three shot over 45% of their shots from downtown, Seth Curry shot 48 threes and 15 twos.  So what I'll say is this: Shurna played a jumpshooting big man throughout the tournament, and did a pretty good job. "Jumpshooting big man" is a very close approximation of what Shurna will be doing at NU, although he will technically be the third tallest player on the court most of the time. Therefore, we should just be damn pleased that he did a pretty good job overseas representing his country, and he probably got some pretty decent coaching while there, and he'll probably be a better player for it, plus it looks good for him and for NU. So there. I essentially said nothing in this paragraph.

Kyle Rowley: Let's start easy: Kyle Rowley will get better with time, and a few weeks of practice on a team on which he was the youngest player was a really good way to start. Of course, the down side of this is that as the least senior member of the team - in fact, at 19, he's four years younger than anybody else on the team - and that seniority might have gotten him shafted in terms of playing time. And, if I must say so, these reports from latinbasket are actually somewhat complementary, which is sorta to be expected from guys whose job is it to write exclusively about Trinidad and Tobago basketball, but still good to see. 

Now, here's the problem. At NU, Kyle starts at center, ahead of Luka Mirkovic, a pretty talented center with really good rebounding skills and touch extending beyond the three-point line. In the T&T, Kyle was on the bench behind Julius Ashby, who plays for Tokyo Apache, a confusingly named Japanese basketball team, and Miguel Williams, a 31 year old player for the Petro Jazz of the Trinidadian league. 

That doesn't work.

Unless we want to start considering our team worse than the national team of Trinidad and Tobago, which I personally don't, something's gotta change. 

The fact that the Trinidadian national team doesn't trust him to play in games which have a competitive level below that of Division I, much less Big Ten basketball, is not a good sign for his game now. Now, I have faith that his game will improve with time, but the wrong way to handle his development is by thrusting him into the starting lineup in one of the biggest seasons in Northwestern basketball history.

John Plasencia and Brian Smith: These guys won't play this year, but a few weeks of good coaching and a taste of winning didn't hurt anybody. Also, it looks like Plasencia's got some serious receiving skill - then again, it's really difficult to take anything out of a tournament in which the USA was so thoroughly better than their opponents. And that Plasencia is the GTEOATU19, but that's a given. 

So, that's that. Because I'm really really good at finding perfect endings to blog posts, here's a dude playing the national anthem of the USA on steel drum, followed by a kid playing the Trinidad and Tobago national anthem on steel drum wearing a Santa hat. 

Friday International B-Ball Update

John Shurna and his USA U-19 Basketball team are the only undefeated team in the World Championships at 6-0, and will play in the quarterfinals today against Canada. What's more, Shurna has been a pretty integral part of the team. I talked about his double-double against Iran already, but since, he's started a few games. He put 13 and 6 on Egypt, 8 on a good Greek team, didn't score, but picked up 7 boards against Puerto Rico, and on Wednesday hit 4/5 shots against Lithuania to finish with 9 points. He's averaging a respectable 6.8 points and 4.7 boards in roughly 12 minutes a game - really not bad numbers, especially on a fairly high level of play. The numbers to really like are his 70% shooting clip from inside the arc and the rebounds, which has obviously always been NU's weakest aspect to our game.

However, I'm a little angry to see that USA Basketball's photographers continue to take exclusively unflattering pictures of John. (To see prior documentation of this, scroll to the bottom of this post and click on the "gawkiness" label.

John Shurna (11) tries to shoot a ball which weighs 150 pounds

But, anyway, good luck to Shurna against those silly Canucks today, and here's to him continuing his decent role play in purple this winter. I'd tell you to go support him by dropping a comment on his player profile, but, his comment section is relatively robust already. Who new Johnny had that much support in Lithuania? 

On a sad note, Kyle Rowley did not attain Carribbean glory - after the 3-0 start the TnT team had, with much hullaballoo on this site despite the lack of Rowley contribution, the team fell 76-73 in the CBC Championship semi-final to the British Virgin Islands, who presumably made Raja Bell and Tim Duncan come to the tournament pretending to be 18 or younger, probably by having them wear Jonas Brothers t-shirts on court and talking about the latest episode of NYC Prep. Rowley didn't get any playing time in this game. 

However, the team still had hope - after all, the gist of this tournament was that the top 3 teams went to next year's CENTROBasket tourney - all they had to do was beat Cuba in the third place game.

As a half-Cuban, this caused a major conflict of interest for me. Since I'm extraordinarily pasty and white and, according to Northwestern, only know somewhere between 83 and 88 percent of Spanish 101  and nobody in my family has been to Cuba since 1964, I have little in common with your average Cuban. The only determining Cuban factors are my ability to enjoy plantains, Celia Cruz, and Cuban sports teams. Thus, my two passions, Cuban athletics, and Kyle Rowley, were pitted head to head.

Ultimately, I decided I'd rather my motherland (or fatherland - I'm half on the wrong side for it to be a motherland) be victorious. Sure enough, they were, winning 91-77 on the back of 22 points from comrade Geoffrei Silvestre. Kyle Rowley played garbage minutes, and presumably demoralized, had only 2 points and 2 boards in 10 minutes. 

The upshot of this? Well, the CBC Championship, like I said, is a qualifier for CENTROBasket, which is in turn a qualifier for the FIBA Americas tournament, which in turn is a qualifier for the FIBA World Championship, which the winner of gets an automatic berth to the Olympics. So this loss whittles Rowley's opportunities for Olympic Gold for two: either he can participate in the same event in two years, which will feed into CENTROBASKET again, which will again feed into the FIBA Americas tournament, which will this time qualify teams for the Olympics, or, he could try to pick up luge in time to be a member of the Trinidad and Tobago contingent at next year's Vancouver winter games. (Sadly, most 7'0 figure skating careers in Winter Olympic history end in heartbreak and occasionally fractured ice skating rinks.) 

Shurna's place in U19 history will be discovered by Sunday - there will be posts by then. 

Nationalism Week rolls on!

A short post for a day on which I'm one of about 30 people in the United States working, we'll catch up on our nation-representing athletes.

First off, something I hadn't mentioned yet: some of our FIVE TIME champion Women's Lacrosse players were involved in the Lacrosse World Cup: Alums Kristen Kjellman, Sarah Albrecht, and Lindsey Munday played for the US, who won, and senior Hannah Nielsen contributed to a second-place Australian team. So, let's get six.

Now, to the guys I've written about. 

The first thing I wrote about, the IFAF Junior World Championship, the international American Football tournament in which future Cats John Plasencia and Brian Smith are participating, is going as you'd expect. USA beat France 78-0, and Mexico 55-0. Plasencia has three receptions for 32 yards, not too shabby, and there's no stats for Smith because he's a lineman, but, apparently, he's starting. In somewhat disturbing news, Plasencia caught a two-point conversion to make the score 24-0 against France, even though they were up 23. Against France. In an American football tournament. Really? 23-0 wouldn't have been good enough, USA Coach, you had to go for two? Really? You had to go for two? I'm pretty sure there's no direct translation for "two-point conversion" into french, and you had to go and make sure that you guys didn't only win by 77? Really? At least leave Plasencia out of it. Anyway, Northwestern football: expect victory. 

John Shurna got his grown man on with an 11-point, 10-board double-double against Iran in a 106-55 victory, including 5 offensive boards, prompting FIBA to write this about him:

"After a tense opening that saw the USA lead by just two, 14-12, with less than three minutes remaining in the first period, 203cm power forward John Shurna made the running for the USA, scoring seven points as his team went on a 16-1 run to finish the quarter in control, 30-13."

Yeah! That just sounded cool. Unfortunately, through no fault of his own, Shurna has gotten no better at making photographers take good pictures of him.

The only photographic evidence of John Shurna recording a double-double for Team USA.

Last, but not least, Trinidad and Tobago has to be the feel-good story of the summer in the Caribbean basketball world. Despite my gloom-and-doom predictions last week, the team is 3-0 so far in the CBC championship, but Kyle Rowley has had little to do with their success. In their victory over Jamaica, he played two minutes and had no stats besides a turnover. He got 8 minutes, presumably garbage time, in a 90-63 romp over Barbados, and actually performed really well: 7 points and 5 rebounds. (Per 40 minutes: 35 points and 25 rebounds.) And against the Bahamas, he didn't get off the bench. Obviously, this isn't good for NU, but we should be happy for the T&T. And we should forget how bad I am at predicting Carribean basketball games. 

USA! USA! (basketball this time)

Update: video of John Shurna's high school slam dunk competition now at the bottom of this post. Just cuz.

Woooooo!

Today, we're going to discuss John Shurna, who's representing the good ol' US of A in the U19 World Tournament starting... well, some parts of the USA Basketball website say it starts today, some parts say it starts tomorrow, and as a journalist, my first instinct is to not inquire any further into this and write a post on it today.

Just like I said in the T&T post about Kyle Rowley, participating internationally is great for young John. In my first basketball post, I probably sounded a little harsh when I said "John Shurna is not Kevin Coble." Well, he's not, but he certainly has the potential to be Coble-esque. He's 6'8, has an above average jumper, is a pretty good rebounder for a small forward, and has enough athleticism to win a high school slam dunk competition, which, if you ask me, is how you describe a keeper. On court last year, he looked tentative at best, didn't make it look like he could create his own shot, which I'd hoped he'd be able to. It's just good a) to see him picked to a select squad, especially over guys like fellow Big Elevener, Minnesota's Ralph Sampson III, and b) playing competitively in the offseason. I expect Shurna to play well, especially on a team with relatively few big names. A nine-point eight-rebound performance in a scrimmage against Croatia is what I want more of, both this tournament and with NU next year. 

Now, to a quick qualm with USA Basketball. They hired a dude to take professional photos of the U19 team scrimmaging. And the only photo they have of John Shurna is this downright silly snapshot.

John Shurna (55) has an allergic reaction to undercooked shrimp he ate earlier while dribbling

To the naked eye, it looks like a blurry photo of John Shurna doing a hop-step while vomiting, while #67 does the "getting low" portion of the dance to the song "Low" by Flo Rida. And that's about as much insight into the photo as you can get from me. Either Team USA needs a new photographer, or their current photographer doesn't believe in John Shurna's constitutional right not to look really, really silly while dribbling. 

A brief aside: A lot of people, including me, were really, really impressed to see Shurna make the USA team. After all, Team USA is associated with pretty much perfect basketball, and Northwestern, well, isn't. But Shurna's selection isn't as surprising as I originally thought.

First off, Shurna isn't the first active Wildcat to suit up for the USA, in fact, he's the ninth since Robert Lebuhn did it in 1955. (For fans of boring lists here's every USA-representin Cat chronologically: Lebuhn, Andre Goode, Shon Morris, Kevin Rankin, Pat Houlihan Baldwin, Geno Carlisle, Steve Lepore, and Evan Eschmeyer.) Nor is he the first to represent the U-19 team - Lepore did that in 1999. 

Secondly, the U-19 team isn't exactly the Dream or Redeem team. This year, the bulk of the young talent in the USA program, including guys eligible to compete with the U-19 team, are representing in Belgrade, at the World University games. And the U19 team isn't historically great: they haven't brought home gold since 1991, and despite boasting a roster featuring five players now in the NBA in 2007 such as Stephen Curry, Michael Beasley, and others, they lost to Serbia and finished second. This year, the roster doesn't feature top-notch talent. Despite the fact that I devote far too much free time to the study of basketball, I only know two players on this year's team: Shurna, and the brother of that Stephen Curry fellow, Seth, who I know because he is the brother of that Stephen Curry fellow and not of his own accord. And I'm pretty sure a Washington State coach was involved in the selection process, because in addition to Shurna, who was heavily recruited there, two WSU players made the cut. So, weird.

The first game of the tournament is either today, or tomorrow, as previously noted, against Iran, who, quite frankly, have bigger issues to worry about.

Anyway, don't blame it on the Shurna if the USA doesn't bring it home. They're going up against talented foreign teams, who have been playing together longer than Shurna n Co have.  

Then again, I've been wrong before: Led by a two-minute, no-point, one-turnover performance from NU's own Kyle Rowley, the T&T shocked the Caribbean basketball world by taking down Jamaica. Congrats to Rowley and all Trinidadians everywhere. 

OK, folks, there's esoteric, and then there's commenting on a blog with a reference to something somebody says in the background of a youtube video of a northwestern basketball player's high school slam dunk competition. BKSherman opted for the latter in the comments. Ask, and you shall receive, so I'm posting said video. 

T&T! T&T!

Wooooooo!

If you're as good as the Flags of the World sporcle quiz as I am - unlikely, punks - or you're up on your NUsports.com press releases,  you probably already guessed that this is the Trinidad and Tobago version of this post I wrote a few days back. 

Kyle Rowley, NU's resident seven-footer, will be representing his native homeland of the T and T at the Carribean Basketball Confederation championship starting today in the British Virgin Islands. 

First off - this is great for Kyle. My viewpoint on Rowley is thus: I'm not quite sure why he came to college last year, considering he had the opportunity to return to high school. He's got all the requisite skills and body type to be a major college center, what he doesn't have is enough playing experience to put it all together - he only started playing as a freshman in high school, and he left high school after his junior year - for starters, he travels more than your average pickup baller, and despite being 7 feet tall, has shot layups that hit the backboard above the square. The more he plays, the less we'll see of these follies, so it's good to see him playing competitive ball in the summer. 

Kyle has experience playing for the basketball version of the Soca Warriors - he participated in a U17 tournament two years ago, and it's good to see him moving up to the senior national team, because that level of competition was beneath him. Rowley led the competition in rebounds and blocked shots (look at the graphic on the right side) averaging 9.8 points, 9 boards, and 4 blocks. Those stats are all you need to know about the competition in that tournament - in his play last year, Rowley wasn't a dominant rebounder or shot-blocker when playing against guys his own size, only averaging 1.8 boards and recording nine total blocks all season long, 11 less than he had in that five game U17 tournament. But those stats are definitely a glimmer of potential, regardless of whether they were against guys half his size. 

Later today, he'll be playing his first game in this tournament, and facing stiffer competition in a Jamaican frontline of Louisville's Samardo Samuels and ex-training camp Clipper and Purple Drank favorite (ffavorite?) Kimani Ffriend (no typo, he's just really a really ffriendly guy), which goes to show that not all Jamaican centers end up wearing the uniforms of other countries. In a surprise move, recently graduated NU walk-on Marlon Day, who hails from Jamaica, was not selected for the Jamaican team's final roster by head coach Sam Vincent.  

As much as we want Kyle to succeed, don't hold your breath expecting Trinidad and Tobago to do much winning. If you have ever spoken to someone from Trinidad and Tobago for more than five minutes, you will probably hear about their excessively cool soccer team, who qualified for their first ever World Cup in 2006, causing the entire country to stop caring about anything else for several weeks, and causing me to briefly contemplate getting a Shaka Hislop tattoo on my right bicep.

But you won't hear about their basketball team - the country has essentially no basketball heritage, as evidenced by the fact that Rowley's U17 team went 0-5 in the aforementioned tournament, and that the squad at the 2007 rendition of this tournament finished in ninth place out of nine. But remain optimistic - if the team manages to be in the top three teams out of 8, they will qualify for next year's Centrobasket tourney, which probably means as little to you as it does to me. It's not like the Bahamas and Barbados are basketball powers, and, hey, if Northwestern lost 34 straight football games and only 15 years later, went to the Rose Bowl, who's to say the T&T can't change their losing ways and go all the way with a little bit of Rowley?