BATON ROUGE — LSU junior Marie Ferdinand is one of 45 collegiate basketball players from across the country that have been invited to the 2000 USA Basketball Women’s Summer Development Camp/Jones Cup Team Trials, the USA Basketball Women’s Select Team Committee announced on Thursday.
Ferdinand, a 5-foot-9 guard from Miami, Fla., becomes the first LSU player since Cornelia Gayden in 1995 to be invited to a USA Basketball camp.
The trials run from May 17-22 in Colorado Springs, Colo., and the event will combine off-court seminars on topics such as life skills and sportsmanship with practice sessions and a four-team, round-robin tournament.
The top 12 players at the camp will be selected to compete in the R. Williams Jones Cup in Taipei, Taiwan from July 16-20. The 12-player squad will be announced on May 22 and will train from July 3-12 at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., before departing on July 13 for the Jones Cup competition.
The USA Jones Cup team will also play the U.S. Senior National Team on Sept. 3 in Honolulu, Hawaii. That contest will be televised lived by ESPN2 and it will be the final domestic game for the U.S. National Team before departing for the Olympics in Sydney, Australia.
“Anytime we have a player that gets the opportunity to be involved in a highly-competitive experience during the Summer months is a real plus,” LSU coach Sue Gunter said. “It’s good not only for the player, but also for our team. Hopefully Marie will make the team. We have great confidence in her.
“Marie is only beginning to touch her potential and to reach what we think she’ll be. This sort of competition will allow her to play against some of the best players in the World is just a great opportunity for her.”
Ferdinand, who will be a senior next year for the Lady Tigers, is coming of a season in which she averaged 17.5 points, 5.3 assists and 2.9 steals a game. Ferdinand’s 93 steals during the year were an LSU single-season record and her 170 assists were the second-highest single-season total in school history. Ferdinand lead the Southeastern Conference in steals, ranked second in assists and was third in scoring.
Ferdinand was named first team all-SEC by both the Associated Press and the league’s coaches and she was also a member of the all-tournament team at the NCAA East Regional. Ferdinand also earned SEC Player of the Week honors one time.
Ferdinand started all 32 games for the Lady Tigers, leading LSU to a 25-7 overall mark and a school-record 11 SEC wins. LSU also reached the Elite Eight at the NCAA Tournament.
The USA Basketball Jones Cup team will be coached by Bonnie Henrickson, the head women’s basketball coach at Virginia Tech. Henrickson will be assisted by St. Joseph’s head coach Stephanie Gaitley and Grambling head coach Rusty Ponton.
The United States is the defending Jones Cup gold medalists and in 18 Jones Cup competitions, the U.S. has collected eight gold medals, four silvers medals and four bronze medals. The U.S. has a 110-22 mark overall record in Jones Cup games.
For more information on Marie Ferdinand and the LSU women’s basketball team, please visit The Official Web Site of LSU Athletics at www.LSUsports.net.