MANISA (Türkiye) - Season 3 of the Youth Basketball Champions League is ready to roll again on April 22. When we tip-off this time around, we will have five new teams and two new countries represented.
The growth of this event has been dramatic and these new teams are not just here to make up the numbers. Let's get to know our newest contenders from Germany, and a very familiar name to BCL fans, Telekom Baskets Bonn.
THE PAST
This is the club of Tuomas Iisalo, TJ Shorts and the 2023 BCL champions, but before that, this was the club of Mike Koch and becoming the first club in Germany to build its own stadium and adjoining training facility in 2008.
It was around that time between 2007 and 2008 that the club also combined with previous rivals Dragons Rhondorf, with the intent of increasing the number of their own academy players eventually making it to first team level.
The plan worked, and the Bonn Rhöndorf connection has since gone on to produce names like Jonas Wohlfarth-Bottermann, Kostja Mushidi, Fabian Thülig, Florian Koch, Artur Kolodziejski, Zach Ensminger, Dominik Bahiense de Mello, and Ousmane N’Diaye.
In 2007 and 2008, Bonn Rhondorf instantly got to work and reached the Final Four of the NBBL.
Since then, they have been regular winners of silverware at youth level in West Germany, winning the West German Cup and West German Championship on several occasions in the U12, U14, and U16 age groups, with the U12s and U16s also reaching the Final Four of the JBBL in 2014.
THE PRESENT
The team that will be coming to Manisa are the current U18 West German League and Cup champions and will play in the Final Four of the German Cup in May.
They compete in the U19 NBBL, which is the highest division in German youth basketball and also in the German senior third division, Pro B.
Head coach Francesco Tubiana will lead his team into this year's event on a high, having already won silverware this season, and also with an in-depth knowledge of each player's journey throughout their time in the Bonn Rhondorf. He has been the Sports Director of the entire youth department in Bonn since 2023.
The leader of this team is their shooting guard Kenan Reinhart, who scored 3.7 points and 1.2 rebounds in the Pro B and 18.5 points, 3.3 rebounds, and 2.9 assists in the NBBL.
He also picked up 4.0 points per game for Germany at the FIBA U17 Basketball World Cup 2024. This season Reinhart has already started the integration into the Bonn first team and should see minutes at the senior level either this season or next.
He won't be alone either, small forward Josh Behrendt is another who has started to get involved with the first team this year and is averaging 12.9 points and 4.4 rebounds in the NBBL.
The rest of the 2007-born generation traveling with Bonn to the YBCL includes Montenegro U16 international Vuk Scepanovic, Carlo Schmid, Linus Sundermann, Fynn Dobiecki, David Boning, Luca Forster, and Cavit Gurbuzer.
Gurbuzer is an invitational player who is joined by 2008-born point guard, Dusan Ilic, from BBA Hagen, where they put up dominant numbers this season.
Big man Gurbuzer averaged 21.1 points, 14.0 rebounds, and 3.3 blocks while shooting 79 percent on two-pointers, whilst Ilic averaged 19.4 points, 3.9 rebounds, 12.1 assists, and 1.9 steals.
Ilic holds Serbian and German nationality and is clearly amongst the most talented 2008-born players in Germany, demonstrated by back-to-back games with 35 and 30 points in the second half of March, and averages of 32.8 points and 6.0 assists per game when playing against his own age group in the U16 JBBL for Hagen.
The rest of the 2008-born generation includes point guard Gaston Nguyen Manh, who is also an invitational player from BG Gottingen, where he has put up 19.8 points, 2.3 rebounds, and 4.3 assists in the NBBL. And finally Leonard Franzen, who scored 8 points per game for Bonn in the NBBL.
This is clearly an already talented group that has been bolstered with extra talent with the express intent of challenging the later rounds in the YBCL and maybe even making a run at the title.
THE FUTURE
You couldn't get a much tougher welcome to the YBCL than Bonn's draw in Group B.
They will face Belgian power-house Oostende at 14:00 on April 22, then get a day's rest before matching up with last year's runners up Galatsaray, at 14:00 on April 24.
This looks like a group where every team is capable of taking a win off any of the two teams, so potentially one win could be enough to make it to the Semi-Finals if the points differential goes in Bonn's favor.
However, if coach Tubiana and his team want to be certain of staying in contention for the podium, they will need two wins from two games to be certain.
It's a big ask as a debutant team, but the way this roster has been put together, and the season they have had already, it's certainly not an impossible ask.