The Canarias Basketball Academy will again be present with two teams in the Rinus de Jong Invitational, the men’s youth basketball tournament to be held in Den Bosch, the Netherlands from December 27 to December 30. In the first edition of the invitational, Canarias won the competition in the under-18 category and finished second behind Mega Vizura Belgrade in the U20s.
The participation of both Canarias Academy teams offers the home crowd the opportunity to see a great number of their better national talents in action. Those gifted Dutch players are now trying to improve their skills at the famous basketball school of Rob Orellana, the American owner/trainer. At least eight Dutchmen will wear the CBA jersey in the Rinus de Jong: Quincy Treffers, Matthias Runs and Joel Brandt will join Canarias’ U21 squad while Shane Hammink, Jito Kok, Floris Versteeg, Stefan Topalovic and Mekbib Anthonisse will represent their academy in the U18 competition.
A year ago, four other Dutch talents made so much progress at the Spanish school that they all earned a transfer to a first-division college in the States: Sharlon Kloof went to Saint Bonaventure, Kadeem Pantophlet to Duquesne University, Thomas van der Mars to Portland University, and Joey van Zegeren to Virginia Tech.
Organisers of the Rinus de Jong Invitational, named after the man who brought the Den Bosch to the upper class in Europe in the 1980s, are working hard to complete the list of participating teams. They expect this job will be done in a couple of days.
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