STARKVILLE — The Mississippi State women’s basketball team is off to Europe.
The Bulldogs will represent the United States at next week’s 2019 Summer World University Games in Naples, Italy.
The team departs today, and the competition is set to begin July 1 with a friendly against Japan at 10:30 a.m. Pool play will be held July 3-5 with games against Mexico, Taipei and Slovakia on the docket.
The top two teams from the four pools will then advance to the second stage of competition, in which they will play for first through eighth place July 7-9.
“It means a lot because USA is something that is bigger than just us,” redshirt sophomore guard Myah Taylor said at a pre-tournament press conference Tuesday at Humphrey Coliseum. “We’re getting ready to represent our country and with that comes a lot of pride and hard work.”
The Bulldogs will bring a roster of 12 players to the biennial tournament. Among those are six newcomers — junior transfers Yemiyah Morris and Sidney Cooks and freshmen Jayla Hemingway, Aliyah Matharu, Rickea Jackson and JaMya Mingo-Young.
Jackson, a McDonald’s All-American and the highest rated recruit in program history, missed a week of practice while playing for Team USA in the FIBA 3×3 U18 World Cup in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia June 3-7. Her team went undefeated and took home the gold medal.
Graduated point guard Jazzmun Holmes will also join MSU in Italy. Schaefer asked Holmes earlier this month to participate as a way to showcase her talent to scouts overseas after not receiving a WNBA roster invitation.
“The opportunity is great,” Holmes said. “I’m glad Coach Schaefer asked me go over and play with them and kind of help out (with the younger players).”
With such a youthful roster, the added month of practice has been a major bonus for Schaefer’s team.
Unlike past summers, the Bulldogs are not as limited in their practice hours by the Southeastern Conference or NCAA given their participation in the World University Games. As such, the Bulldogs have worked closer to their normal 20 hours per week of practice as a way to bring the young roster up to speed.
“Our training has been quite a bit different in this June than in June’s in the past,” Schaefer said. “Our young kids have been thrown in the fire pretty quick.”
Once in Naples, the Bulldogs will be up against some of the premier collegiate talent in the world. Given their opponents, Schaefer is viewing the tournament as more of a building block than last season’s summer exhibition trip to Italy.
“We made the decision very early on that this is not a foreign tour where you’re going over there, playing a bunch of club teams that are not very good and you look like $1 million and you win by 60, and everybody’s happy and everybody plays 10 to 12 minutes per game and that’s it,” he said. “We made the decision we’re going to go over there and compete with the best and try to win it.”
Ben Portnoy reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @bportnoy15.
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