Auckland Tuatara players Reuben Te Rangi and Kruz Perrott-Hunt have been named in the Tall Blacks squad ahead of the FIBA World Cup in the Philippines.
Te Rangi is a long-time Tall Black and has enjoyed another dominant season with the Tuatara in the Sal’s NBL.
Perrott-Hunt, who made his Tall Blacks debut in 2022, has looked sharp since joining the Tuatara mid-season after finishing his college career.
The pair are part of 21 players named in an enlarged squad on Thursday.
Coach Pero Cameron will assess these 21 athletes over the next month, before trimming the list down to 18 players to attend a Tall Blacks training camp in Auckland from 25-31 July. A Tall Blacks squad will then travel to Japan, Germany and China as part of a pre-World Cup Preparation tour, with a final squad of 12 athletes selected prior to the start of the FIBA World Cup on 27 August.
Coach Cameron says that this is an exciting and dynamic squad, which features many familiar faces from both the Qualifiers and Asia Cup teams – as well as some new inclusions.
“We’ve lost a couple of really good players who have moved on this year, in Tom [Abercrombie] and Rob [Loe], and both we and the athletes realise the huge commitment and preparation required for this World Cup and everything leading up to it – it’s not taken lightly,” says Cameron.
“We’re excited to see which new players can step into those gaps and that’s what the recent FIBA windows have been about; building depth as well as well as qualifying [for the World Cup]. Player availability around these different windows has been a curse and a blessing for us to be honest, the positive is that it’s allowed us to see a lot of players and for them to get experience at that level.
“So yes we’ll miss some of our veterans from past campaigns, but it’s exciting to see these new athletes coming through and the impact they can have.”