Team USA is off to a 2-0 start at the FIBA U19 Basketball World Cup in Switzerland. <\/p>\n
Coming off an 88-73 victory<\/a> over Australia to open up pool play on Saturday, the Americans cruised past France in game two on Sunday, winning 108-77. Kentucky freshman guard Jasper Johnson<\/a> saw 19 minutes of action off the bench for Team USA, finishing with four points (1-4 FG), two assists, one rebound, and one steal. Johnson earned all of his points in transition. His best individual possession came off a defensive steal, which he turned into an assist the other way. <\/p>\n Leading the way for Team USA was Louisville\u2019s incoming freshman Mikel Brown Jr.<\/a>, who (unfortunately) looked excellent in the win. Brown led all scorers with 24 points on 8-11 shooting. Arizona freshman Koa Peat<\/a> chipped in 17 points while BYU freshman AJ Dybantsa<\/a> wasn\u2019t far behind with 16 points of his own. <\/p>\n Johnson had some company watching from the stands, too. His new college head coach, Mark Pope<\/a>, made the trip overseas to show his incoming guard some love. Pope was a support coach for Team USA during training camp, where he worked with Johnson and Malachi Moreno<\/a>, the latter missing out on the final roster cut. <\/p>\n But Johnson isn\u2019t the only player in this event that the Big Blue Nation should be taking note of. A handful of Pope\u2019s favorite 2026 high school recruits are also on the roster. Five-star guard Caleb Holt<\/a> was the best of the bunch with his 10 points (4-5 FG) and two assists in 14 minutes. Fellow five-stars Jordan Smith Jr.<\/a> (seven points, three assists) and Tyran Stokes<\/a> (five points, four rebounds) also made contributions. <\/p>\n Johnson and Team USA will look to finish off the group stage games with a 3-0 record when they return to the hardwood on Tuesday against Cameroon (0-2). Tipoff is scheduled for 11:15 a.m. ET and will be streamed live on\u00a0FIBA\u2019s YouTube Channel<\/a>. The first round of the tournament begins on Wednesday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Team USA is off to a 2-0 start at the FIBA U19 Basketball World Cup in Switzerland. Coming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3724],"tags":[7,4452,7910],"class_list":{"0":"post-137422","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-jasper-johnson-25-overtime-elite","10":"tag-mark-pope-91-newport-senior"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114774194923665049","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}