San Juan Challenger Recap

Hey half-court hoop fans,

Welcome to the latest edition of The Drive, your inside pass to the world of 3×3, where we bring you behind-the-scenes access, game updates, and all the latest news straight from the court. Let’s dive right into the action!

🇵🇷 Turismo San Juan Challenger

Princeton left San Juan with a 4th place finish and $6,000 after a 2-2 record on the weekend. In most cases, this would be considered a good result, but anyone who watched could only describe Princeton's performance as a roller coaster: some really high peaks and a few lows. The two wins were in dominating fashion, leaving no room for doubt. Princeton beat Lidingo City 21-11 and crushed the red-hot home team, 11th ranked San Juan, 21-10 in what felt like momentum builders. Yet the two wins were bookended by losses to two good teams, Paris, and Lausanne, and each loss was marred with preventable mistakes that proved costly.

Highlights

The San Juan win was the highlight of the event. San Juan’s squad has been on a tear as of late - finishing 1st and 2nd in their last two events, and they’ve had a great season overall. Not only did we beat them in strong fashion but we did it on both sides of the ball. Offensively, we shot 12-17 (71%) from the field, including 5-5 on 2-pointers. On the defensive end, we held San Juan to 7-25 (28%) shooting from the field.

Henry Caruso broke the single-season rebounding record (240) held by former Princeton Player, Kareem Maddox (222), this weekend in San Juan. Look for him to keep adding to his monster rebounding totals in the coming events.

🌎 Around the World

Princeton just missed qualifying for the Hong Kong World Tour via the San Juan Challenger. The top 3 teams from each challenger qualify for a corresponding World Tour, so it always stings a little to finish 4th place in Challengers. Luckily, we have two more opportunities to qualify for Hong Kong. Princeton remains in 16th place in the world.

At the Shanghai Masters this past weekend, Ulaanbaatar won its first ever World Tour - congrats to them. They are known as some of the nicer guys on tour, and Mongolia has a really strong 3×3 fanbase.

Amsterdam won a mid-week Challenger in Al Bidda Park (Qatar), and this weekend the World Tour Masters moves to Chengdu, China. Princeton has the weekend off.

🐢 Crack the Shell: Results

Raudondvaris Lithuania won the event, so if you thought a North American team would pull it out, you were wrong. The top 3 teams were European and 4-6 were North American, so much for home-court advantage.

The top 3 rebounders at the event were the three we asked about. The rebounding results were:

1. Wes Molenti (Lausanne)- 38 Rebs

2. Henry Caruso (Princeton)- 27 Rebs

3. Aurelijus Pukelis (Raudondvaris) - 22 Rebs

📅 Upcoming Schedule

• October 28-29: Taipei Challenger

• November 2-4: Neom Challenger

• November 4: Hoop it Up - National Championship