A pair of former champs, two debutants highlight ANGT Paris field

Past champions PFBB and Joventut and newcomers from Monaco and host Paris add spice to the final ANGT qualifier of the season

The final ticket for the Euroleague Basketball Adidas Next Generation Tournament Finals will be handed out in the French capital with the debut of the ANGT Paris. The eight-team field for the first event in Paris includes 2010 and 2017 continental champion U18 PFYM INSEP Paris and 2013 winner U18 Joventut Badalona as well as debutant teams U18 AS Monaco and U18 Paris Basketball - with the latter serving as the host team. The winner in Paris will reach the ANGT Finals at the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Final Four in Berlin. The other teams to already qualify for the May 23-26 event are defending ANGT champ U18 Real Madrid, U18 FC Barcelona and U18 ratiopharm Ulm.

The eight teams will play in round-robin group play with all four teams in the two groups facing each other once. The top finishers in the groups will square off in Sunday’s first-place game to determine the fourth qualifier for the ANGT Finals. Group A includes Joventut, U18 Next Generation Team Paris, U18 Olympiacos Piraeus and Paris. Group B consists of U18 Gran Canaria, PFBB, Monaco and U18 Panathinaikos Athens.

The top name in Group A is Joventut, which has played in the competition every season since 2007-08 and is making its 17th appearance overall. The Spanish side took first place in the ANGT Patras last season - the first time it won a qualifying tournament since the ANGT L’Hospitalet in 2017-18. Joventut then went 0-3 at the ANGT Finals. Joventut lost to U18 FC Barcelona in the 2020-21 ANGT Valencia first-place game. Olympiacos will be participating in the competition for the eighth time overall and third in a row. Last season the Reds took seventh place at the ANGT Patras. Host Paris is playing in the ANGT for the first time. The other team is the NGP, which will be coached by Petteri Koponen.

In Group B, Gran Canaria returns to the competition after not playing since 2020-21, when the Spanish side was fifth at the ANGT Valencia. Gran Canaria finished first at the ANGT Valencia in 2019-20 and qualified for the ANGT Finals for the first time, but the event was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. PFBB owns two continental trophies and is competing for the 15th time in the latest 16 tournaments, missing only the 2020-21 session due to government restrictions during the pandemic. PFBB went 2-2 last season and took fourth place at the ANGT Belgrade after winning the ANGT Varese in 2021-22. Panathinaikos is on hand for the sixth time overall and last season finished fifth, but grabbed two victories - one more than it had combined for in its previous ANGT history. Panathinaikos then lost all three games at the ANGT Finals. The other team in the group is debutant Monaco.