Hoops notes for 7/20

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1) Penn Athletics finally made its official announcement regarding the men's basketball recruits for the Class of 2013. As I mentioned in a post  last week, the official class only includes three of the five incoming freshmen: Carson Sullivan, Brian Fitzpatrick and Sean Mullan. The other two players, Denzel Washington's son Malcolm and Jack Eggleston's brother Tommy, were not listed because they are considered "preferred walk-ons." None of the five newcomers are listed yet on the 2009-10 roster.

2) If you read my story a few weeks ago, you already know that all the freshmen except Mullan have been playing in the Delaware County Pro-Am summer basketball league. The current Penn players' team is Trad Jazz, which has gone 2-6 so far. Their next game is tomorrow against UNUM (6-2), which includes a number of notable former Penn hoopsters like Brian Grandieri, Mark Zoller, Michael Jordan, Geoff Owens and Jeff Schiffner. Trad Jazz will play its last game Sunday as the league's playoffs begin Monday, though the squad is unlikely to make the postseason.

3) Trad Jazz got both of its wins before Zach Rosen left for Israel. Rosen and Team USA got off to a great start at the Maccabiah games with a blowout win over Mexico, 112-13 (that is not a typo; they actually won by 99 points). Rosen put up eight points and four assists. The next game was a revenge match against France, which beat the  US and forced them to settle for Bronze in 2005, and returned most of its players for the 2009 games. The US won 131-77 behind 25 points by Todd Golden and 23 points by Dan Grunfeld (son of Wizards GM Ernie). Rosen's line -- five points, four assists, three rebounds.

The US was finally tested in its third game of group play against Russia. It was a close game that came down to the end, with the score tied at 71 and just seven seconds remaining. Russia missed the last shot, but they managed a tip-in with .5 seconds remaining and held on for the win. With the loss the US had to beat Argentina to advance to the semi-finals, and the rules are such that a 4-or-more point victory would yield them the first seed and a semi-final matchup with Canada while a less-than-4 point victory would have meant the second seed and a semi-final bout with defending champion Israel.

Team USA  beat Argentina 97-89 today behind Grunfeld's 25 points and eight rebounds. Rosen added eight points and four assists. Now the US is set to play Canada tomorrow at 4 p.m. Israeli time (which is 9 a.m. EDT) with a chance to play the winner of Argentina-Israel in the championship.