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John Calipari and three of his Kentucky Wildcats are ready to start U19 FIBA World Cup play. With Cal coaching Team USA, which includes P.J. Washington and Hamidou Diallo, and Tai Wynyard playing for New Zealand, UK will be well-represented.
Team USA and Team New Zealand are two of 16 teams participating. They’ll participate in preliminary group play, which leads to a round of 16 and so on.
International basketball is nothing new for these Cats. Diallo and Washington helped USA qualify for this year’s cup, and Washington has already won gold with Team USA before. Wynyard has become a New Zealand basketball veteran.
Diallo and Washington both played in two exhibition games before preliminary play, with Diallo averaging 16 points and Washington averaging 15.5 points.
Wynyard will play at 7 a.m. ET on Saturday, taking on Korea. Team USA will play at 11:30 a.m. ET.
Here is the schedule for Team USA:
(All times are Eastern Time, as Cairo is six hours ahead of Kentucky)
July 1 vs Iran 11:30 a.m.
July 2 vs Angola 12:15 p.m.
July 4 vs Italy 10:00 a.m.
Those are just the three group games. All 16 teams will then be placed into a single-elimination tournament based on their group placement. The teams involved are Egypt, Spain, America, Canada, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Angola, Mali, Iran, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, France, Lithuania, Italy and Germany.
The round of 16 games will be July 5th, with the quarterfinals July 7th, Semifinals July 8th, and finals July 9th.
All games will be live streamed via FIBA’s live stream channel, which can be accessed at FIBA’s website.
The can also watch the games on FIBA’s YouTube channel.