Yellow Jackets’ Okogie getting exposure to international basketball

Georgia Tech’s Josh Okogie, named to the All-ACC Freshman team earlier this spring, has accepted an invitation to attend the USA Basketball Under-19 World Cup training camp in Colorado Springs.

Only 28 players were invited to participate in the camp, June 18-25 at the U.S. Olympic Training Center. He is the first Georgia Tech player to be invited to a USA Basketball Camp since Marcus Georges-Hunt and Robert Carter Jr. in 2013.

Finalists for the team will be announced June 20. The 12-man team that will represent the United States in the FIBA U19 World Championships, July 1-9, in Cairo, Egypt, will be announced June 22.

“I’m blessed and honored to receive this opportunity,” Okogie said. “It’s a big milestone in my career. It’s been a dream of mine just to visit other countries, to play internationally.”

Okogie led Georgia Tech in scoring at 16.1 points. It was the fifth-highest scoring average for a freshman in school history and his 596 points were the third most. He scored in double digits in 32 games.

Chuma Okeke of Atlanta’s Westlake High School is the only other Georgian to receive an invitation.

Yellow Jackets draw Northwestern in Big Ten-ACC Challenge

Georgia Tech will host Northwestern in the 19th annual Big Ten-ACC Challenge. The game will be played at a date to-be-named in late November at McCamish Pavilion.

The two teams have played three times in the annual series. Georgia Tech won 66-58 in Evanston, Ill., in 2014. Northwestern won the first two meetings — in 2010 in Evanston and in 2011 at Philips Arena.

Georgia Tech is 6-10 all-time in the Challenge and lost to Penn State in 2016. The Yellow Jackets are 4-3 in the series when playing at home.

The non-conference schedule is beginning to take shape for the Yellow Jackets. Home games have been arranged against Bethune-Cookman on Nov. 19, Texas-Rio Grande on Nov. 22, North Texas on Nov. 24, Grambling on Dec. 1 and Tennessee on Dec. 3. The Yellow Jackets are at Wofford on Dec. 6 and at Georgia on Dec. 19. The season opens on Nov. 11 against UCLA in Shanghai, China.

The Yellow Jackets will play home-and-away ACC games against Clemson, Notre Dame, Virginia and Wake Forest and will host games against Duke, Miami, N.C. State, Syracuse and Virginia Tech.

Pastner lands Tennessee transfer

Atlanta native Shembari Phillips, who played two seasons for Tennessee, is transferring to Georgia Tech. He will sit out the 2017-18 season and have two years of eligibility remaining.

“Shembari will be a good addition to our program,” head coach Josh Pastner said. “He will be a veteran presence for us and help us ‘get old and stay old,’ which I think is key for us in the ACC. Sitting out a year will be an important part of his development and based on some of the guys we will be losing to graduation, we will need him to step up for us right away.”

As a sophomore, Phillips played 31 games at Tennessee and averaged 6.2 points, 3.1 rebounds and 1.7 assists. He averaged 8.3 points and 5.0 rebounds during the final three weeks of the season. As a freshman, he played in 33 games, starting the final 11, and averaged 5.4 points.

Phillips played his senior season at Wheeler. He played at Tucker before transferring.

He is the fifth player to join the program in the off-season. Pastner signed point guard Jose Alvarado from Brooklyn, New York, forward Evan Cole from South Forsyth, 6-8 wing Curtis Haywood from Oklahoma City, and 6-8 forward Moses Wright from Raleigh, North Carolina.

This story was originally published June 9, 2017 at 4:36 PM with the headline "Yellow Jackets’ Okogie getting exposure to international basketball."