Bradley Beal Elite continues to make waves within Team USA.
USA Basketball recently announced its 12-player Men’s U16 National Team roster for the upcoming FIBA Americas U16 Tournament in Mexico and BBE’s Jeremy Fears made the squad.
Jeremy is the only player on the roster without previous U.S. National Team experience. All 11 of his teammates participated in the USA Men’s Junior National Team minicamp back in May. But Jeremy impressed USA scouts enough this summer through his play with BBE to earn a rare invite to training camp despite not being at minicamp, then continued his meteoric roster to land a coveted roster spot.
Introducing the 2021 🇺🇸 Men's U16 National Team!
The USA will compete for a seventh consecutive U16 gold medal at the FIBA Americas U16 Championship Aug. 23-29 in Xapala, Mexico.
— USABJNT (@usabjnt) August 16, 2021
Blessed to make the U16 USA National Team…Time to bring home that 🥇 🇺🇸🏀 @usabjnt @usabasketball pic.twitter.com/dod5bJE9DA
— Jeremy Fears jr. The Floor General (@jeremy_fears) August 16, 2021
🇺🇸🇺🇸 Congratulations @jeremy_fears! #WeAreLaLu https://t.co/gxXaOrLjRT
— La Lumiere Boys Basketball (@LaLuBasketball) August 17, 2021
Ready to Battle!! 🇺🇸🏀 pic.twitter.com/Uk14MkmZ6f
— Jeremy Fears jr. The Floor General (@jeremy_fears) August 17, 2021
“I think we got a great group of young men,” said USA U16 National Team head coach Sharman White. “We’ve got an incredible group of guards, we’ve got a lot of versatile frontcourt players and we think we’ve got some guys that can really get after it. They possess a lot of athleticism but they also are very skilled and it allows us to be able to play the way we want to play as USA Basketball. So we’re looking forward to working with this group, looking forward to all the things that this group is capable of doing and hopefully they’ll cement their legacy with every other U16 group that we’ve had at USA Basketball.”
The FIBA Americas U16 Tournament begins on Monday, August 23. Team USA will play in Group B with matches against Puerto Rico (8/23 at 3:30 p.m. EDT), the Dominican Republic (8/24 at 12:30 p.m. EDT) and Chile (8/25 at 12:30 p.m. EDT).
After playing each of the teams in its groups, all eight teams advance to the quarterfinals on August 27. The semifinals follow on August 28 and the gold and bronze medal games will be on Sunday, August 29. Team USA is undefeated (31-0) with six gold medals in six FIBA Americas tournaments since the biennial event was launched in 2009.
“We’ve got a lot a lot of things we got to try to get prepared for as we get ready to go to Mexico and these guys have shown they’re very coachable and they also take the coaching and learn from it,” White said. “So we feel comfortable knowing that we’ll be able to put a lot of the things we want to do in and and we’ll just keep continue to develop this group and progress them in hopes of bringing home a gold medal.”
