Teenage sensation Sitaya Fagan has been given her first Opals call-up as coach Sandy Brondello turns her focus towards the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup.<\/p>\n
Fagan made headlines when she received 27 scholarship offers from some of the best women’s college basketball programs in the US last year.<\/p>\n
But ahead of her first season with the University of Southern California, the 18-year-old has been named in the Opals squad for its upcoming two-game series against World Cup silver medallists China at Melbourne’s John Cain Arena in July.<\/p>\n
Fagan is not the only fresh name to receive a call-up.<\/p>\n
Former Sydney Flames young gun Bonnie Deas was given the nod after a stellar college season with the University of Arkansas.<\/p>\n
The squad announcement comes as Brondello looks to finalise her 12-player roster for the World Cup in Germany beginning in September.<\/p>\n
Against China, the Opals will be without most of their Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) stars, who helped them sweep the World Cup qualifiers in March.<\/p>\n
Experienced forward Darcee Garbin returns to the national team for her first appearance in two years following the birth of her daughter.<\/p>\n
After being waived from their respective WNBA clubs, Ally Wilson (Washington Mystics), Alex Fowler (New York Liberty) and Maddy Rocci (Toronto Tempo) come into the squad.<\/p>\n
Despite being called up for the initial 19-player squad for the qualifying tournament, veteran forward Sara Blicavs has missed out.<\/p>\n
Opals squad:<\/p>\n
Zitina Aokuso, Amy Atwell, Chloe Bibby, Isabelle Bourne, Bonnie Deas, Abbey Ellis, Sitaya Fagan, Alex Fowler, Alicia Froling, Darcee Garbin, Cayla George, Steph Reid, Maddy Rocci, Alex Wilson, Courtney Woods<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Teenage sensation Sitaya Fagan has been given her first Opals call-up as coach Sandy Brondello turns her focus…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":724466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,198556,512,40755,11261,290350,85,2957,8453,21418],"class_list":["post-724465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-bonnie-deas","tag-china","tag-fiba","tag-opals","tag-sitaya-fagan","tag-sports","tag-usa","tag-usc","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/724466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}