Pair of Cats benefit from tough competition at FIBA U19 Basketball World Cup

If point guard Kylan Boswell has any issues incorporating a flood of talented new players into Arizona’s offense next season, he’ll now have some high-level experience to draw from.

And if Filip Borovicanin needs an extra ounce of confidence going to the basket against Pac-12 opponents next season, the same thing applies.

Neither Arizona guard picked up a medal in the FIBA U19 Basketball World Cup that finished Sunday in Hungary, with the USA finishing fourth and Serbia sixth. But Boswell played a key point guard role for an American team that struggled to weave together its talent, while Borovicanin played with notable aggressiveness in putting together three double-doubles over Serbia’s final four games.

But while Borovicanin’s Serbia team finished in the same No. 6 spot as its FIBA world ranking, Boswell played for a top-ranked USA team that failed to medal for only the fourth time in 17 FIBA U19 Basketball World Cups. Moreover, the Americans lost in the semifinals to France, which had never beaten the USA in any youth world competition.

When you play for USA Basketball, you are expected to win the gold — even if you have to shoehorn a collection of high school and college talent together in just over a week.

“It was a fun tournament,” Boswell said, according to a USA Basketball spokesman. “We didn’t get the results we wanted at the end, but this is a difficult thing to do, to meld like you need to in such a short amount of time. We tried our best and it’s a disappointing result.”

USA Basketball began with a collection of 30 high school and college standouts in Colorado Springs last month, cut down to 12 within six days and headed off to Hungary after a few more days ... while many other countries have top youth cohorts playing together often for years.

Another factor making the USA’s life continually tougher: The continued rise of international basketball, which has produced players winning the past five NBA MVP awards and roughly half of Tommy Lloyd’s Arizona roster every season.

The USA, in fact, barely held off a rising French prospect named Victor Wembanyama in the 2021 U19 World Cup final, and Wembanyama just became the NBA’s No. 1 overall pick, with the potential for multiple NBA MVPs in the years ahead.

This year’s FIBA U19 MVP, it might be noted, was big man Izan Almansa, a projected 2024 first-round NBA pick who has signed with the G League Ignite for next season. The five-player all-U19 team included just one American (Villanova guard Mark Armstrong) and Turkish wing Berke Buyunktuncel, who is expected to join UCLA next season.

In what might be of note for the Bruins’ final Pac-12 journey next season, Buyunktuncel had 19 points, four rebounds and five assists in Turkey’s 84-70 win over USA in the bronze-medal game on Sunday.

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Still, Colorado coach Tad Boyle spoke highly of the players he led as the head coach of USA’s U19 team this summer.

“This is a group of tremendous young men who have great futures ahead of them,” Boyle said in a USA Basketball statement. “It’s my job as a coach to get buy-in, and I just couldn’t get buy-in at the defensive end of the floor. We had a short period of time to gel offensively which is why you have to rely on your defense and taking care of the ball.”

The USA was dominant in four of its first five World Cup games but sputtered against France in the semifinals and against Turkey in the bronze-medal game. The Americans allowed France to shoot 52.5% from the field, including 8 of 16 3-pointers, while Turkey hit 7 of 18 3-pointers despite shooting just 37.7% overall.

Turkey also made up for its inside shooting by collecting 18 offensive rebounds while dishing 22 assists for the 26 field goals it made. USA set up just nine of its 26 field goals with assists, relying often on individual efforts.

“We wanted to control the offensive glass (against Turkey) and we didn’t,” Boyle said. “Combine that with 21 turnovers and number of possessions heavily favoring Turkey, and we just weren’t good enough.”

Boswell finished the tournament averaging 6.4 points, 0.9 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 3.0 turnovers while becoming one of the team’s top defenders. He shot 42.9% overall and 35.3% from 3-point range.

Borovicanin, meanwhile, struggled to hit only 16.7% of his 3-pointers but made his way inside for 59.3% from inside the arc and took five trips to the free-throw line in four different games. Borovicanin averaged 14.1 points per game, along with 7.3 rebounds and 2.3 assists.

Borovicanin led Serbia to a 115-83 round of 16 win over Korea with 26 points, 11 rebounds and three assists while also posting double-doubles against France (13 points, 11 rebounds) in the quarterfinals and against Argentina (21 points, 14 rebounds) in the fifth-place game on Sunday.

Also, in what just might be the most valuable stat Borovicanin can draw from next season: He played 170 minutes over seven games, an average of 24.3. As a freshman at Arizona last season, Borovicanin played just 53.3 total minutes over 14 games, sitting out 21 entire games.

He never cracked the playing rotation. But next season, he might, joining a perimeter group that Boswell may be leading.