While World Cup 2023 will start in just over two months (August 25 – September 10), the first pre-selections fall and we just learned than that of Japan (24 players) included the names of Rui Hachimura And Yuta Watanabe.
Leaders of the Japanese selection, the wingers of the Lakers (free agent this summer) and net (also free agent) should logically be among the 12 names selected by the coach, Tom Hovasse, for this competition which they will play – in part – at home (Indonesia and the Philippines are the other two host countries).
Rui Hachimura and Yuta Watanabe are accompanied by 22 players in this expanded list: Nick Fazekas, Yuya Nagayoshi, Yuki Togashi, Yudai Baba, Koya Kawamata, Soichiro Inoue, Makoto Hiejima, Yutaro Suda, Shuta Hara, Matthew Aquino, Kai Toews, Keisei Tominaga , Aki Chambers, Tenketsu Harimoto, Hugh Watanabe, Yuki Kawamura, Luke Evans, Seiya Ando, Josh Hawkins, Hirotaka Yoshii, Yudai Nishida, Ren Kanechika and Akira Jacobs.
As a reminder, in front of his audience in Okinawa, Japan will be in pool E along with Australia, Germany and Finland. By finishing in one of the first two places, he would then cross paths with the Slovenian group in the second round, to hope to reach the quarter-finals of the tournament…
