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Basketball all over the world

Texas A&M players traveled the globe to play this summer

By BRIAN DAVIS
The Dallas Morning News

If any Texas A&M student had a boring summer, they need a better travel agent. Or, they just need to develop an outside jumper so they can join the men's basketball team.

Several A&M players spent the summer crisscrossing the globe on a hoops junkie's dream vacation. The Aggies toured with teams chock full of select college players to places like Serbia, Holland, Taiwan and Australia.

The Aggies returned to College Station this fall ready to impress new coach Mark Turgeon. Several A&M players said the team should start the season with high expectations and hopes for a Big 12 title.

"Our guys came off a great year and had a great summer," Turgeon said. "The only thing that could have been better than what these guys did would have been if I was able to coach them for 10 days and take a foreign tour."

The Baylor and Oklahoma men's basketball teams did just that. The Bears went to Cancun, and the Sooners played in Vancouver. Several Aggies said they've had enough traveling for awhile, especially guard Josh Carter of Lake Highlands.

Carter was invited to the Kobe Bryant Skills Academy in late June in Santa Ana, Calif. There he got to meet his favorite NBA player - Bryant, of course - and play with other talented college and high school guards.

From there, it was on to Pennsylvania and Team USA tryouts for the Pan American Games. Carter was one of 14 finalists but one of the last two players cut. No big deal, though. Carter simply joined Athletes in Action and went to play in Australia.

Carter scored 17 points, 22 and 27 points in three different games over the last two weeks. It took 24 hours for Carter to get back home. He flew from Australia to Los Angeles to Denver to Houston, then drove home to College Station.

"I guess I was a little more aggressive and had the ball more," Carter said. "I got to come off ball screens, and you could just shoot. I was getting a lot of points like that, and I was just driving more."

Incoming freshmen DeAndre Jordan, Nathan Walkup and B.J. Holmes all played in the Global Games in Dallas in early June.

Jordan went on with Team USA to the Under-19 World Championship in Serbia. Team USA lost to Serbia in the gold-medal game, and Jordan played only five minutes.

"He didn't get to play as much down the stretch as he would like," Turgeon said of Jordan. "But it's still a great experience for him, because he got to be around college basketball and college basketball practice."

Sophomore Donald Sloan of Seagoville played for a separate Athletes in Action squad in the Jones Cup in Taipei, Taiwan, in July. Sloan's team tied for third place with a 5-4 record.

Bryan Davis, a sophomore from Grand Prairie, joined the East Coast All-Stars for a 10-day tour in Holland and Belgium in August. Davis had 16 points and 11 rebounds against the Dutch national team in the first game, but the All-Stars finished the tour with a 3-4 record.

Davis said he loved the experience. But he's ready to be back at school and start working toward the upcoming season.

"The overall experience, I matured a lot from a lot of things I went on in games and things like that," Davis said. "I think this can really help us. But I think everybody's ready to come back and be together as a family, like it was last year as a team."

n Brian Davis' e-mail address is brdavis@dallasnews.com