Jonathan Davis and Team USA start their FIBA U19 World Cup title defense

The 2021 FIBA U19 World Cup starts on Saturday, July 3 in Latvia and our very own Jonathan Davis will be representing the United States as one of the 12 players on Team USA.

Davis becomes the latest in a line of recent Badgers to represent USA Basketball. Most recently in 2015, Nigel Hayes accepted an invite from USA Basketball for the Pan American Games. In the summer of 2012, Sam Dekker was a member of the USA Basketball U18 national team that defeated Brazil for the gold medal in the FIBA Americas Championship. In 2010, Jon Leuer earned a spot on the USA men’s select team that trained against the U.S. men’s national team as it prepared for the FIBA World Championships.

The USA will open play against Turkey on July 3 (9:30 a.m. CDT), followed by Mali on July 4 (12:30 p.m CDT) and close preliminary play against Australia on July 6 (12:30 p.m. CDT). All three games will be streamed on FIBA’s YouTube channel. The Americans split a pair of scrimmages in the past couple days, losing to Australia but beating Spain.

There are 16 total nations in the tournament, which in addition to the USA and host Latvia includes Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, France, Japan, Lithuania, Mali, Puerto Rico, Senegal, Serbia, South Korea, Spain and Turkey.