Written By Nate Bilgoray and Devyn Levin
The U.S. U18 team won the gold medal Friday in the EMYG three-on-three boys’ basketball tournament – and beat some familiar faces to do so.
USA-1 (Aaron Weiss, Jonah Drezner, Cole Kaufman and Ryan Altman) edged USA-2 (Joshua Moorman, Morris Lichienstein and Trey Schachter), 15-14.
Drezner led USA-1 with seven points.
“This was their first experience, and they got really good competition against Germany, so I think this medal means a lot,” said Josh Steinberg, coach of the U18 gold medal team and assistant for the U18 5-on-5 team.
The two teams were undefeated until they met in the finals. All of the players are on the U.S. team in the 5-on-5 competition.
“Since we’ve met at the airport, we’ve established a connection. We are great friends now and we know each other inside out,” Kaufman said.
The players will be back on the same squad Sunday against Israel.
U16 falls in finals
The highest placing of the three USA U16 teams competing, USA-2 (Jonah Flaisher, Levi Feller, Shimon Segal and Garrett Schwartz) lost to France, 15-9, in its gold medal game.
“At the end of the day, they (France) have been playing with each other for a year. We met each other Monday. Chemistry is everything here,” Schwartz said.
U16 coach David Robertson was impressed with his own team’s chemistry.
“The four guys on our team, they were playing together. They were passing. They were looking for each other,” Robertson said. “They rotated well with the way substitutions work. They played hard, and that goes a long way when you play together like [the way they did].
“They were excited to play, and they had an energy from start to finish that was just enough. They wanted it a tad more than us.”
Playing basketball all day in a round-robin scenario is physically tiring.
“It’s fun, it’s quick and it’s fast-paced,” Robertson said.
Feller led the U.S. with five points.
USA-1 (Gabe Halbrecht, Lucas Rotem and Felix Jacobs) beat Austria for the bronze medal, 10-9. Halbrecht led the U.S. with seven points.
All three USA teams reunite as a unit Sunday against Great Britain.
3-on-3 vs. 5-on-5
How does 3-on-3 differ from 5-on-5? In 3-on-3:
- The game is half-court.
- The ball is a size six but weighs the same as a size seven (men’s 5-on-5 ball).
- Any shot within the 3-point line is one point, and a shot behind it is two points.
- The games are 10 minutes long unless a team scores 21 points under that time limit.
- There is a 12-second shot clock.
In the beginning of the tournament, many players were unsure about the different rules. In the first game of the day, the U18 USA-1 team thought it could reset the ball by taking it to the corner of the baseline, but the ref said that the ball must be reset at the top half of the court.
Steinberg, who won gold as a player in Buenos Aires, coached the players through the confusion.
“At the end of the day, the rules only matter so much,” Steinberg said. “You have to play the game the way the refs are calling it and I think the guys worked through that.”
Nate Bilgoray is a sophomore at the University of Florida studying journalism and sports media. With ambitions to be the play-by-play voice of the UFC, Nate is honored to continue his journey to doing so with Maccabi Media. Connect with Nate on LinkedIn here.
Devyn Levin is from Cherry Hill, NJ, and is a rising junior at The Ohio State University. You can follow her work at @devynlevin on Instagram and at maccabiusa.com.