Conor Morgan of Victoria is part of the Killer B squad.
They know they likely won’t be part of the pay-off at the FIBA World Cup next year and hopefully Paris Olympics in 2024 when the NBA players are available, but sa国际传媒’s so-called B team is earning A+ grades.
Morgan scored 12 points to help sa国际传媒 move to 10-0 in World Cup qualifying with a 112-71 victory over Panama (2-8) on Sunday in Edmonton. sa国际传媒 had already clinched a World Cup berth with last week’s 94-56 victory over Venezuela (7-3) in Edmonton with Morgan again scoring 12 points.
The top seven teams in the 2023 FIBA World Cup will advance to the Paris Olympics.
“It was really good, obviously, to be able to qualify as a team and set up sa国际传媒 in a really good place for the summer with the World Cup,” Morgan told the sa国际传媒.
sa国际传媒 used 39 players to qualify for this month’s soccer FIFA World Cup and will have used a similar number of players to get to the FIBA World Cup from Aug. 25 to Sept. 10, 2023, in the Philippines, Japan and Indonesia.
With its NBA players in mid-season and unavailable for this round of qualifying, sa国际传媒 Basketball called on its European-based pros such as Morgan. The six-foot-eight stretch forward, a graduate of the Mount Douglas Secondary Rams, plays for Slask Wrocław of the Polish Basketball League (PLK) and earned his first national team call-up since the early games of qualifying.
“For me, it was great to have a couple good national team games under my belt,” said Morgan, 28.
“It feels like it has been a long time coming with hopefully many more to come.”
Aaron Best of the London Lions of the British Basketball League led sa国际传媒 with 22 points and said: “There’s 12 guys that dressed tonight, but there’s about 40 players that are a part of this whole process. Each and every one of them are locked in and committed to the goal and they understand that we all have the next man up mentality.”
Several of sa国际传媒’s NBA players were available and played in the 99-87 win over world top-10 Argentina before 7,000 fans at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre in August.
Although they realize their roster spots will be taken by sa国际传媒’s NBA players for the World Cup, the Killer B contingent is proud of stepping into the breach when needed.
“We’re a really tight-knit group as of the past couple of years and it’s been great to see these guys year-in and year-out,” said Morgan.
The sixth and final round of World Cup qualifiers are in February when sa国际传媒 will play at Argentina and Venezuela.
