John Calipari coaching the U.S. U-19 team could be mutually beneficial

College basketball’s premier recruiter now has another advantage over his competitors.

John Calipari will coach the U.S. team at the FIBA U-19 World Championships in Egypt from July 1-9, ESPN.com reported Thursday morning.

The U.S. U-19 team is typically compromised of rising college sophomores, incoming college freshmen and a few of the nation’s best rising high school seniors. That means Calipari will potentially have an opportunity to coach a couple of uncommitted high school prospects that he is recruiting.

At the last U-19 World Championships in 2015, Arizona’s Sean Miller coached the U.S. squad, which included then-high school standouts Harry Giles, Jayson Tatum, Josh Jackson and Terrance Ferguson. Arizona was a finalist in Jackson’s recruitment before he chose Kansas last year and landed Ferguson before the sharpshooter encountered eligibility issues and opted to play professionally overseas instead.

Of course, coaching the U-19 team created some recruiting headaches for Miller too. Arizona-bound forward T.J. Leaf backed out of his commitment and signed with UCLA instead not long after Miller cut him from the U-19 roster.

In recent years, USA Basketball has encountered problems attracting top players at the U-19 level. College coaches have blocked their top incoming freshmen from participating because of the desire to get them acclimated to their new teammates and to campus life during the summer.

Calipari is an attractive choice for USA Basketball because his involvement would seemingly guarantee access to his 2017 signees. Calipari could potentially get a headstart in coaching Quade Green, P.J. Washington and recent Kentucky enrollee Hamidou Diallo, all of whom were members of last year’s U.S. U-18 team.

This isn’t the first time Calipari has gained a recruiting edge coaching internationally. Before Olympic qualifying began in 2012, Calipari named heralded 16-year-old Karl-Anthony Towns to the Dominican Senior National Team. Towns committed to Kentucky later that year and went on to become the No. 1 pick in the 2015 NBA draft.

Some will undoubtedly complain that Calipari is gaining an unfair advantage, however, he’s certainly not the first coach to benefit from his involvement with USA Basketball. Coaching the USA National Team and receiving the endorsement of the likes of LeBron James and Kobe Bryant certainly aided Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski on the recruiting trail throughout his tenure. Miller, Billy Donovan and Shaka Smart are all previous coaches at the U-18 and U-19 levels.

The U-19 World Championships is traditionally the tournament at which the U.S. is most vulnerable because other other countries’ teams have been training together for far more time. While the U.S. has won the past two U-19 World Championships in 2015 and 2013, it only took gold in one of the previous six.

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Jeff Eisenberg is the editor of The Dagger on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at daggerblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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