South Korea’s national men’s basketball team coach Jun-ho Ahn pledged to lay the foundation for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics with a ‘hopeful, long-term’ attitude.
The Korean men’s basketball team, led by coach Ahn Jun-ho, returned home on the 8th after playing two away games against the Japanese national team in Tokyo, Japan on the 5th and 7th.
It was an away game that was expected to be difficult, as Japan is ranked 26th and Korea is ranked 50th in the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) world rankings, and Japan is in top condition ahead of the Paris Olympics opening at the end of this month.
However, our country won the first game on the 5th with a score of 85-84, and lost the second game on the 7th with a score of 80-88, but it was a relatively close match.
In particular, Lee Jeong-hyeon (Sono) scored 27 points with 6 3-pointers in the first game and also scored 26 points in the second game, emerging as the national team’s ace.
Excluding Byun Jun-hyung (Sangmu), who was born in 1996, our national team consists of 11 young players born between 1999 and 2001, and they also gained experience through 한국을 this evaluation match in Japan.
In an interview after returning to Korea, Coach Ahn Jun-ho said, “Because Japan is a team that will be going to the Olympics, they had a lot of training and their organization was solid,” and “We had young players and only had four days of practice, but they showed passion and fighting spirit and did their best.”
Coach Ahn, who took charge of the national men’s basketball team in December of last year, said, “The players who went on this expedition to Japan are the present and the future of Korean men’s basketball,” and pledged, “Although we haven’t been to the Olympics since the 1996 Atlanta Games, we will have a mid- to long-term plan until the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and move forward step by step with a ‘hopefully long way to go’ attitude.”
Coach Ahn’s contract period is until the 2025 FIBA Asia Cup finals, but he is determined to do his best until then to raise the international competitiveness of the men’s national basketball team to a level where they can challenge for the Olympic finals.