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The Huskies are waiting on a certain local 5-star prospect to commit to Coach Hopkins’ talents but USA Basketball isn’t waiting around. It was announced this afternoon that Hopkins will serve as one of two assistant coaches for the Team USA U19 World Cup this summer.
Extremely honored and humbled to represent our country and help coach at the @FIBA U19 World Cup in Crete this summer. Looking forward to the opportunity to reclaim gold! #USAMBU19 https://t.co/n0P4XSgybD
— Coach Mike Hopkins (@Coach_Hopkins) May 14, 2019
Kansas State’s Bruce Weber will be the head coach while Hopkins and North Carolina Central’s Lavelle Moton have joined on as assistants. This will not be the first time that Hopkins has partnered with USA Basketball as he was previously the head coach of the 2012 USA Select Team which trained against the USA Men’s National Team as well as served as a staff assistant for the USA Men’s National Team from 2008-2016.
The tryouts and roster announcement will both take place later this June and 12 players will ultimately make the roster. You would think that there’s a strong possibility that both UW commit Isaiah Stewart and target Jaden McDaniels might be members of the team and are likely to be invited to the training camp. Last year McDaniels was one of the training camp attendees for the U18 team while Isaiah Stewart made the roster for the U17 team two years ago. New Husky transfer-in Quade Green played on the 2016 U18 team alongside former Husky star Markelle Fultz and one-time Husky commit Michael Porter Jr.
While this theoretically could be a distraction from the team for Hopkins, it’s more likely to pay dividends by allowing him to connect with the best of the rising senior prospects in the country from the class of 2020 and hopefully coach some future Huskies a few months early.
Congrats to Coach Hop as he continues to make Husky fans proud!
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