USA Takes Gold in the U18 FIBA Americup Tournament: What I Saw from Pat Ngongba

I spent some time watching the FIBA U18 Americup games featuring incoming Duke freshman center Patrick Ngonga who made the team mostly as a reserve. The team, coached by Arizona coach Tommy Lloyed, won the gold medal Monday morning by beating a fiesty first half effort from the Argentinian Team and cruising in the second half to take it 110-70. Patrick didn’t play much in the gold medal game, but entered the game with about a minute left in the 3rd quarter – he was still able to, in 11 minutes of play score 6 points, pull down 4 rebounds and block 2 shots. In the 6 games for USA Basketball Ngongba averaged 4.5 points and 4.8 boards. His best game arguably came against Belize in the Group Phase where he scored 12 points, pulled down 6 boards and had 3 assists in 19 minutes of play. His highest rebounding total came during the Group Phase again Brazil where he pulled down 8 boards in 11 minutes.

In November, while at Paul VI Catholic, Ngongba underwent a successful surgery to repair a broken bone located in his foot. It caused him to miss the majority of his senior year basketball wise. Nogonga played in both the Chipotle Nationals and the Jordan Brand Classic in April acquitting himself well in both despite his team losing to his future Duke teammate Cooper Flagg in the National Championship game.

Judging the performance of the 6’10 center is difficult with the mitigating factors being his obvious injury recovery and lack of consistent activity over the past year. While it’s hard to gauge whether he has fully regained his former fitness level as he only averaged 11.5 minutes per game during the event, Pat did look like he was able to run the floor well and seemed to still have good footwork. There were good and not so good in his play – but again – I preface by saying that being out of basketball for the better part of a year, this is perfectly normal and acceptable.

The need to improve:

Pat seemed to lack physicality during the majority of the games, especially during box-out opportunities. Some of this could be a lack of strength training and the fact that a lot of these games were track meets and may not be as suited for his style of play. It’s not something I would judge him too harshly on but I’m calling it as I see it. I think there was a lack of aggressiveness from Ngongba but that could be a lack of confidence as he regains form. Playing against size and strength currently could be an issue for Pat, Duke’s strength training…