The U.S. team playing in the FIBA Americas U18 Championships will be headlined by UConn incoming freshmen Olivia Nelson-Ododa and Christyn Williams.

The duo, who are expected to arrive on campus tomorrow, were among 12 players named to the team after trials held at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Their inclusion is hardly a shocking turn of events considering that they were the top two scorers on the U.S. team that won the bronze medal at the 2016 FIBA U17 World Championship for Women.

Here's a story I did on the two of them after catching up with Nelson-Ododa and Williams at Jordan Brand Classic media day last month.

Ten of the 12 players will be college freshmen in the fall - Jenna Brown (Stanford), Queen Egbo (Baylor), Nazarah Hillmon-Baker (Michigan), Rhyne Howard (Kentucky), Jordan Nixon (Notre Dame), , Sedona Prince (Texas), Abby Prohaska (Notre Dame), Nalyssa Smith (Baylor) and the two UConn commits. The only players with remaining college eligibility are Aijha Blackwell and Class of 2019 Notre Dame commit Anaya Peoples meaning five of the 12 players are committed to either UConn or Notre Dame.

The 12 players will return to Colorado on July 20 to begin preparations for the tournament which will be held from Aug. 1-7 at a site to be determined.

Next up is the naming of the 12-member U-17 national team. The list of hopefuls has been cut from 156 to 18 with UConn Class of 2019 recruiting targets Aliyah Boston, Jordan Horston and Haley Jones among the finalists. The 12 players representing the U.S. in the FIBA U17 World Cup will be announced on Wednesday.

It was a rather memorable trip to South Carolina for a pair of future Huskies.

Megan Walker was named the most valuable player at the CresCom Bank Holiday Invitational after leading her Monacan (Va.) High School team to the title.

In the championship game Walker had game-high totals of 22 points and four steals in a 54-49 win ovr Winder-Barrow out of Winder, Georgia.

UConn Class of 2018 recruiting target Olivia Nelson-Ododa had 16 points and 22 rebounds for Winder-Barrow.

Walker averaged 20 points, 7 rebounds and 3.7 steals to lead Monacan to a 4-0 record including a victory over nationally-ranked Norcross.

Fellow UConn incoming freshman Mikayla Coombs had a pair of double-doubles as the Wesleyan School in Peachtree Corners went 2-2 in the tournament. Coombs averaged 19.8, 7.3 rebounds, 2 assists and 2 steals a game. She also recorded the 1,000 point of her high school career in the tournament, a milestone that obviously would have come much quicker had she not suffered a season-ending knee injury in the first game of her sophomore season.

Nelson-Ododa averaged 21.5 points, 10.8 rebounds and 2.3 blocked shots per game in the tournament  which began Saturday at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center and wrapped up with four games today.

Walker was named the tournament's most valuable player, Nelson-Ododa was named the most outstanding player while Coombs earned all-tournament team honors.

I'm going to be doing the family thing for the next few days so barring any major developments, I won't be posting here likely until we get close to the Maryland game, With last night's game starting so late, my updated story off the win over Nebraska did not make it into the paper.

Also, here's the story on senior guard Saniya Chong returning to the court after missing the last two games with a concussion.

Since I spent and am spending a decent amount of my day in airports in three different states today, I had time to do a little checking on recent UConn players with eight offensive rebounds in a game since Napheesa Collier accomplished that feat last night.

Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis is the last Husky to do that, hauling down eight offensive boards in a 2014 NCAA tournament game against BYU and she also accomplished the feat in a regular-season game against Baylor during the 2012-13 season. Breanna Stewart's career high was eight against during her freshman season. Maya Moore hauled down nine offensive rebounds in a 2008 game against Syracuse.