Sunday’s NCAA tournament game bringing international rematch to Colonial Life Arena

The last time Jack Salt and Matt Freeman were on the court together was last summer in the gym at Westlake Boys High School in Auckland, New Zealand. They were playing pickup games together with some of the country’s best players.

“I’m pretty sure it was my team that got the most wins so I’m looking forward to the rematch,” Salt said.

That rematch comes Sunday in Colonial Life Arena. Salt and No. 1 seed Virginia will face Freeman and No. 9 seed Oklahoma in the second round of the South Region of the NCAA Tournament. It will be the first time they have faced each other in a competitive game.

“We might not get this opportunity again,” Freeman said. “This will be a good one.”

Freeman and Salt are more accustomed to being teammates. They helped Westlake to back-to-back national championships before following what is becoming a more and more well-worn path – from points all around the world to college basketball in the United States.

Eleven countries and five continents will be represented by 14 international players in the two games being played in Columbia on Sunday. Virginia alone has five international players. Oklahoma has three. No. 1 seed Duke and No. 9 seed UCF, who will play in a second round game of the East Region, each have three.

It’s a far cry from when Oklahoma head coach Lon Kruger began his career in 1982.

“Back then, it was probably rare to have a foreign player on the team. Now, it seems like a majority of teams have at least one from outside the country,” Kruger said. “So just the numbers of foreign players have changed a lot. I think the technology, the video, the information that’s available today on foreign players is much greater than it was 40 years ago for sure.”

Virginia head coach Tony Bennett’s playing career ended and coaching career began in New Zealand. After a three-year stint with the Charlotte Hornets, he spent two years playing for the North Harbour Vikings there and then transitioned to the team’s head coach. When he got his first head coaching job in college at Washington State, he recruited Aron Baynes, who now plays for the Boston Celtics, out of New Zealand and hasn’t stopped recruiting international players since.

“When you’re at Washington State, Virginia, schools like that, I think sometimes finding those hidden gems, guys that are academically sound that are excited to come over, sometimes you can find players that you would be in a fight for over here, if there’s a player of that caliber,” he said. “If you have connections, if you can get to them early, sometimes you have a better chance to land them whereas, if they’re in the states, they’re so exposed, and it’s such a recruiting battle. So you try to find your niches. That’s what we’ve done.”

Cavaliers junior forward Mamadi Diakite of Guinea in Africa had 17 points and a career-high nine rebounds against Gardner-Webb in the first round of the tournament Friday. The 6-foot-9, 228-pound Diakite began playing basketball at the age of 14 when he became too tall to continue with soccer.

“I started watching some tapes of Michael Jordan because I wanted to come to the U.S.,” he said.

He posted highlights of himself on Facebook, asking for a place in the United States to play, he said, and ended up at the Blue Ridge School, a boy’s boarding school in St. George, Va., for his final two years of high school. He didn’t see his first March Madness game until moving to the United States.

“I didn’t know what the NCAA was really,” he said. “They told me it was this tournament that had a lot of good players in it. I didn’t know which state was what, but I watched it anyways.”

Now, he’s here.

International Players in Columbia for NCAA Tournament

Virginia

Francesco Badocchi Milan, Italy

Francisco Caffario El Trebo, Sante Fe, Argentina

Kody Stattmann Bentley Park, Queensland, Australia

Mamadi Diakite Conarky, Guinea, Africa

Jack Salt Auckland, New Zealand

Oklahoma

Matt Freeman Auckland, New Zealand

Hannes Polla Lahti, Finland

Kur Kuath Biemon, South Sudan

UCF

Yuat Alok Auckland, New Zealand

Ibrahim Famouke Doumbia Bamako, Mali

Tacko Fall Dakar, Senegal

Duke

R.J. Barrett Mississauga, Ontario

Antonio Vrankovic Zagreb, Croatia

Jack White Traralgon, Victoria, Australia

Sunday’s schedule at Colonial Life Arena

No. 1 Duke vs. No. 9 UCF, 5:15, CBS

No. 1 Virginia vs. No. 9 Oklahoma, 7:45 p.m., TruTV

This story was originally published March 23, 2019 at 4:54 PM.