Opicina and Trieste are ready to host the Luka Dončićs of the future and become the European youth basketball capital for a weekend. The date is set for the last weekend of October, from Thursday 27 to Sunday 30, when the first edition of the No Borders Euro Cup 2022 international basketball tournament will be held at the Aldo Cova Gymnasium in Opicina, organized and conceived by the Jadran Sports Association with its manager Boris Vitez, someone who has known basketball at the highest level for decades, acting as the project’s deus ex machina.
The event will see some of Europe’s best under-16 prospects compete, given the participation of eight top teams. In fact, the youth selections of as many as five top Euroleague clubs (Armani Milano, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Partizan Belgrade and Bayern München), Ljubljana’s Cedevita Olimpija, a protagonist in the EuroCup, and two of the most important youth teams at the Italian level, such as Stella Azzurra Roma and Orange1 Bassano, will compete. In short, a kind of “mini Euroleague of the future.”
Needless to emphasize how this is a not-to-be-missed event for all basketball fans and not only for insiders and various scouts from Europe and overseas who have already pinned on their notebooks several names of players from these teams, many of whom are expected to have an important future as professionals. Suffice it to mention, just to name a few, that it was Olimpija Ljubljana first and Real Madrid later that launched a very young Luka Dončić into the world of basketball that matters. A tournament with several very interesting prospects not only from a technical point of view, but also from a physical point of view, since Bayern München alone has two 16-year-old athletes on its roster who are already well over two meters tall.
The eight teams will be divided into two groups (Group A is composed of Real Madrid, Bayern München, Armani Milano and Cedevita Olimpija while Group B is composed of Barcelona, Orange1 Bassano, Stella Azzurra Roma and Partizan Belgrade) with the elimination round challenges to be held Thursday through Saturday, while the finals will be played on Sunday.
More information regarding the event will be provided during the tournament presentation press conference on Monday, Oct. 24, at 11 a.m. at the ZKB hall in Opicina (Via del Ricreatorio, 2).
