Tennessee basketball freshman Kennedy Chandler has made the 12-man roster for the 2021 USA Basketball Men’s U19 World Cup Team.
Chandler now will travel with Team USA from Fort Worth, Texas—site of the U.S. training camp—to Latvia, where the FIBA U19 World Cup will be contested from July 3-11.
Rated by ESPN as the nation’s top point guard in the Class of 2021, Chandler earned All-America honors from McDonald’s Spalding and Sports Illustrated after leading Sunrise Christian Academy (Kan.) to the championship game of the prestigious GEICO Nationals tournament in April.
He enrolled at Tennessee and began practicing with the Vols earlier this month before departing to compete for a spot on the U19 World Cup Team.
Chandler is one of six incoming college freshmen to make the roster, which also includes Patrick Baldwin Jr. (Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Jonathan Davis (Wisconsin), Caleb Furst (Purdue), Chet Holmgren (Gonzaga), Harrison Ingram (Stanford), Jaden Ivey (Purdue), Ryan Kalkbrenner (Creighton), Kenneth Lofton Jr. (Louisiana Tech), Mike Miles (TCU), Adam Miller (LSU) and Peyton Watson (UCLA).
The 2021 USA Basketball Men’s U19 World Cup Team is led by TCU head coach Jamie Dixon with Stanford head coach Jerod Haase and Yale head coach James Jones rounding out the staff as assistant coaches.
In addition to the USA and host Latvia, teams that will take part in the men’s U19 World Cup include Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, France, Japan, Lithuania, Mali, Puerto Rico, Senegal, Serbia, South Korea, Spain and Turkey.
The USA was drawn into Group D, alongside Australia, Mali and Turkey for the July 3-6 FIBA U19 World Cup preliminary round. The USA will open play against Turkey on July 3, followed by Mali on July 4 and close preliminary play against Australia on July 6.
Reigning FIBA U19 World Cup gold medalist, USA men’s teams have won seven gold medals, three silver medals and one bronze medal while compiling an 98-14 overall record in U19 World Cup play since the event was launched in 1979. Even more impressive, the USA has won four of the past six U19 golds since 2009.
Another current Vol, rising junior Josiah-Jordan James, has experience winning international gold with USA Basketball. James was a member of the United States’ gold-medal-winning team at the 2018 FIBA Americas U18 Championship.
-UT Athletics
