Collin Sexton went for 24 points as the USA U17 team obliterated South Korea, 133-81, on Thursday in Zaragoza, Spain to advance to the semifinals of the FIBA U17 World Championship.
The U.S. will play Lithuania in the second semifinal on Friday at 3 p.m. ET on ESPNU, while Turkey will face Spain in the first. ESPNU will air the championship game on Sunday at 3 p.m. ET.
Turkey ousted Canada, 80-74, despite 33 points from Class of 2019 guard R.J. Barrett of Montverde (FL) Academy. Instead of moving on with a chance to face the U.S. in the finals, Canada will play for fifth place.
“We went out there and executed pretty well,” said Sexton (Pebblebrook H.S./Mableton, Ga.), who scored 12 of his 24 points in the first half. “Everybody played unselfish. We just have to close the game out better. We started the first half and we blew them out. In the second half we just got a little lackadaisical on defense, we really weren’t rebounding and playing hard. But we still had a great team effort overall.”
In another balanced effort that saw all 12 members score by halftime, Kevin Knox II (Tampa Catholic H.S./Riverview, Fla.) had 15 points in the first half and finished with 17, Carte’Are Gordon (Webster Groves H.S./St. Louis, Mo.) scored 16 points on 6-of-8 from the field, Wendell Carter Jr. (Pace Academy/Fairburn, Ga.) and Austin Wiley (Spain Park H.S./Hoover, Ala.) scored 12 apiece, while Troy Brown (Centennial H.S./Las Vegas, Nev.) and Gary Trent Jr. (Apple Valley H.S./Burnsville, Minn.) chipped in 11 points each.
“We dominated the boards, and I was really pleased with that,” said USA U17 head coach Don Showalter (USA Basketball), who upped his record in five U17 World Championships to 28-0. “Our defense in the second quarter was really good, it really broke the game open. We played really solid, we changed up our defenses a little bit. We had some really good individual performances overall, from players coming off the bench to our starters. I like the way we’re coming together chemistry-wise. We’re really feeding off each other that way.”
