A group of 28 players traveled to Colorado Springs for the 2024 USA Basketball Men’s U18 National Team tryouts over the long Memorial Day weekend, and four Indiana recruiting targets made the 12-player roster playing in Argentina next week. The USA Basketball tryouts are always intense, with challenging cuts at the end. This time followed the same plot.
The 2024 FIBA U18 Men’s AmeriCup runs in Buenos Aires from June 3-9.
Darius Acuff Jr., Nate Ament, Mikel Brown Jr., and Trey McKenney made the 12-player team after a five-day tryout. All four players have long been on the Indiana recruiting radar. Ament had a great showing in the third adidas 3SSB circuit stop in Bryan, Texas, behind his three-point shooting at 6’9″. The Hoosiers have been ramping up their interest in Ament over the last few months and attended each of Ament’s games in Texas.
McKenney has been a 2025 priority target for IU for years, and the Hoosiers remain in hot pursuit of him. The Michigan native has always been a difficult-shot maker, but he has found more open three-pointers this spring with The Family in Nike EYBL play. That has pushed his scoring efficiency to a new level against top-tier competition.
Acuff and Brown are both highly-ranked point guards whom the Indiana coaching staff has been working on for a long time. Right now, they both score more than create for others, but they have flashes of passing brilliance. Brown displayed his deep shooting range in Texas a couple of weeks ago, although Indiana Elite found a way to force him into a rough shooting performance.
Acuff and McKenney play together for The Family during the grassroots season. That might have helped them during the tryout process, which could be a positive in the international competition, where most Americans are not familiar with each other.
Other Indiana recruiting targets who played in the tryout but did not make the team include Malachi Moreno, Hudson Greer, Nyk Lewis, and Caleb Wilson. Moreno, Lewis, and Wilson made the first cut down to 18 players but did not survive the second.
