Paul Hewitt's summer in the FIBA U19 world champion could bring some international flavor to George Mason

After looking shaky in their first two exhibition games, Paul Hewitt and the U19 USA team have been doing well in the 2011 FIBA U19 world championship. The team suffered their first loss Wednesday against Croatia but still remain the #1 seed in Group F heading into the quarterfinals (UPDATE: they lost to Russia and are out of the medal round). Some Mason fans would rather Hewitt be on the recruiting trails with his assistants during the hottest time of the year for evaluating potential college prospects than in Latvia. But just because he's not in the US doesn't mean he isn't building connections and observing basketball talent.

Last summer Hewitt began to build a strong network of contacts to recruit internationally after being an assistant coach on the USA U18 national team and also traveled with the U17 to Germany.  Hewitt has already proven he can recruit in the states but it will be interesting to see if he can bring some international talent to Fairfax.  The most recent international players to play for George Mason were Jesus Urbina (Venezuela), Makan Konate (Mali), Raoul Heinen (Netherlands), and Jesse Young (Canada). Young was the most successful of that group and in his best season in 2001-2002 he averaged 14.6 ppg and 8.4 rebounds while earning 1st team All-CAA honors. He and Raoul Heinen were the only foreign players I ever saw at my time at Mason that weren't projects and contributed right away.

Luke Winn of SI.com has a breakdown of the top prospects at this year's FIBA U19 to give you an idea of the some of the talent other schools are picking up overseas.  Most of the players in the U19 games are either already committed to a school or have plans to play professionally but you can see there could be some future DI stars there. You will notice Boise State and Butler are heavily entrenched in scouting Australia players, which have had success in college hoops in recent years.  Paul Hewitt could be on his way to landing some talents like they have and I think that is exciting for George Mason basketball moving forward out of the Jim Larranaga era.