Aday Mara Joins NCAA Basketball: Spanish Center Adds Excitement to New Season

The benchmark university competition in American basketball opens a new season this November 6. The NCAA is back and it does so with ingredients that make it even more interesting than on other occasions, at least from the Spanish perspective. The presence of Aday Mara, who has received the green light from the League to play at the last minute, raises expectations on this side of the Atlantic. The center trained in Zaragoza is one of the candidates to reach the top-5 of the next NBA draft, a sensation supported not only by proven performance but also by a rising profile: he is a unicorn player like Porzingis was in the past and now Wembanyama, two fine centers from Europe with a very high capacity to be dominant on any floor tile. He will be one of the attractions of the course at the United States college, which will lead to a final scheduled for April 8 of next year at State Farm Stadium in Glendale.

RELATED | This is how the last title was decided

Connecticut is the defending champion and will defend that honor throughout the season. They won it in the last final played, in which they clearly beat San Diego State.

Kansas, the one that drank from James Naismith after inventing basketball, is the best-placed team in the previous bets. He will debut against North Carolina Central.

Aday Mara, controversial case

Aday Mara’s NBA dream goes through UCLA. But when he tried to close his eyes to visualize it, the work of his mind was constantly interrupted by Casademont Zaragoza. His training club has claimed its rights over the player and forced the university competition to get wet. The courts will decide in Spain, because the case has been derived there, whether legal action has been taken or Mara has committed a breach of contract.

In August the problem became more entrenched than it should have. From his surroundings it had been leaked out of interest, so that Zaragoza became aware that he would leave for the US when the summer arrived. In poor lands they accepted the agreement signed with the player, his parents and the representative in 2020 – valid until 2027 – for which there was an amount in compensation that had to be paid to leave. When summer arrived, Mara unilaterally announced his departure from Zaragoza and that his destination would be the university that Mick Cronin directs in Los Angeles. Upon reaching the age of majority, Casademont understood that the signed sports scholarship became a professional contract and the amount to settle it was 700,000 euros, which were not paid. The Aragonese club called him to appear for the medical examination, as one of the 2023/24 squad, and his absence was what triggered the complaint for breach of contract.

The NCAA preseason was non-existent with UCLA for the Spanish center. The university’s lawyers have been working together with the League so that the player is considered fully this season, that is, taking part in favor of Aday and against Zaragoza. But it is a private decision that does not affect what the Justice system in Spain may decide. What is confirmed is that he will be able to give his all in his new destiny.

Be that as it may, as will be seen in the future, the 2.20 meter tall center enters a new dimension. The disputes with the club that elevated him must be left behind, although there are ugly details on both sides (one of the last, a message from José Antonio Artigas, general director of the Spanish club, in response to the Los Angeles Times in which said that “the message that a prestigious university like this sends is that contracts between parties do not have to be fulfilled, I don’t know what the UCLA Law professors would think”). Mara, whose family has put studies before a sports career in a decision that confronted the idea of ​​her previous coach -Porfi Fisac- and also became publicly visible, will be able to collect from the NIL (economic rights; the acronym for Name, Image, Likeness), this being one of the reasons that prompted him to take the leap despite Zaragoza’s warnings. He has bet on himself. The drama of the red team is that of many throughout the European continent and even more so now that in the NCAA you can receive a reward for playing even if it is through the aforementioned subterfuge: losing a pearl of the quarry who is pursuing his promotion to the NBA without the effort put into their training being paid as it should. But Aday Mara has bet on himself.

Aday Mara statistics in the ACB 2022/23.

Mara is already in the status of the Spanish National Team, with which she trained in August during preparation for the World Cup, although she stood out in the under-18 EuroBasket (silver medal averaging 21.4 rating). Mara is a fine center who has a great size, an intimidator in defense and a finisher in attack. What makes him special is not only the ability to make three-pointers as well as being forceful under the basket, but also the self-confidence that he displays and how well he reads the game in static. During last season, when it was already clear that the jump to America was a matter of time, there was criticism at the local level that his coach did not give him as much presence as he could have. In the ACB he scored 5.3 points and 3.2 rebounds playing only 12 minutes per game. Now the challenges will be finding the necessary space in California. Also in the Bruins’ paint is Adem Bona, a very strong Turkish-nationalized Nigerian power forward who will fight for minutes. Other Europeans stand out in the squad such as Ilane Fibleuil (France), Lazar Stefanovic (Serbia) and, above all, Jan Vide, a Slovenian who comes from the Real Madrid youth academy and has been one of the standouts of the preseason. The circle can be closed for Aday if he is the best center of the season: he is nominated for that award, which is named after Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the most illustrious member of UCLA basketball throughout its history (he also They were Bill Walton, Baron Davis, Reggie Miller or Russell Westbrook; in the famous LA they were also famous like Mila Kunis, James Franco, Mayim Bialik, etc.), which confirms the expectation that exists for him. Cronin’s team will debut against the Saint Francis Red Flash at Pauley Pavilion.

Other Spaniards eager to please

The Spanish presence cannot be reduced only to Mara. There are other compatriots seeking advancement in the NCAA:

· Baba Miller. It is the other name that points high in the individual lists. The player from Palma de Mallorca has his great season before him, since in the previous one he was banned for 16 games for having accepted payments to have private training sessions when he was still in the Madrid youth team. He improved in the 15 games that he was able to play with Florida State, the university where he will continue, and has just won the U-19 world champion in Debrecen (Hungary). Miller is also projected for the first round of the 2024 draft.

· Conrad Martínez. Member of that Mara generation that fought face to face against the United States in the U-17 World Cup a year ago. Martínez, a cerebral point guard straight from the famous Joventut de Badalona youth academy, has joined the ranks of the Arizona Wildcats.

· Álvaro Folgueiras. Member of that Mara generation that fought face to face against the United States in the U-17 World Cup a year ago. Álvaro, from the Unicaja youth team, was already in Florida last year preparing for this stage. He will now play for Robert Morris’ Colonials.

· The Díaz-Grahams. These canary twins, Guillermo and Jorge, will be back in the Pittsburgh Panthers. They had previously trained at the IMG Academy. This summer they were on the pre-list for the U20 European Championship with Spain.

· Álvaro Cárdenas. He has been at San José State since 2021. There the Grenadian averaged 10 points per game last year.

· Those of Loyola-Maryland. The university that promoted Santi Aldama, small but with an already proven program, maintains Golden Dike in its fifth year and Alonso Faure, very prominent before the coronavirus pandemic.

· Ismael Massoud. This New Yorker born in Madrid in 2000 (his mother, Alicia Rodríguez-Barrera, played for the Houston Cougars before Ismael came into the world) averaged 5.4 points and 1.7 rebounds with Kansas State last season . He will now play with the Georgetown Hoyas under Ed Cooley.

More protagonists of this season

At U-Conn there are two players they will rely on to try to repeat the title: point guard Stephon Castle and center Donovan Clingan. Among the favorites, in addition to the Jayhawks, are the Duke Blue Devils, waiting for the Cooper Flagg era to arrive: there, under the command of the recently renewed Scheyer, we will have Kyle Filipowski, Tyrese Proctor, Jared McCain… More names: in Indiana, Kel’el Ware; in Kentucky, Justin Edwards; at Baylor, Ja’Kobe Walter. And then there is the case of USC, in which the weight will fall on point guard Isaiah Collier, who aspires to be the number one of his generation, but the spotlight will be on the figure of Bronny James, LeBron’s eldest son, who hopes play the season after the summer scare (he suffered a heart attack).

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2023-11-06 11:42:53
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