University of Louisville women’s basketball coach Jeff Walz has built quite a history of international coaching experience.
Walz guided three USA Basketball teams to a gold medal as the head coach and has been an assistant on two other USA teams that won gold medals.
This summer, Walz will get another taste of international competition but it will be with a Turkish National Team. Walz will serve as an assistant coach on the Turkish women’s team that will play in the U20 Women’s European Basketball Championship next month in Lithuania.
“Yes, I am going to be an assistant,” Walz confirmed. “It’s going to be great.
“I enjoy international basketball. They run some good stuff and I think I’ll be able to pick up a lot of basketball too. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
U of L sophomore Elif Istanbulluoglu is a member of the U20 Turkey national team and will play in the event. She played in all 34 games last season as a freshman at U of L and averaged 2.6 points and 2.2 rebounds a game.
Walz has a connection to the team besides Istanbulluoglu. Veteran international coach Ekrem Memnun is the head coach of the team.
Memnun came to Louisville back towards the end of the 2018 season and spent time around Walz and his staff.
“He visited our 2018 Final Four team,” Walz said. “Carol Callan from USA Basketball called and said there was an international coach who wanted to come and spend two weeks with us and I was like that’s fine. He came and ended up spending about a month and a half.
“He’s a great guy and we ended up having a great time. He’s very knowledgeable with basketball. He stayed the last two and a half weeks of the season and then went to Greensboro (for the ACC Tournament) and then we hosted (the NCAA first two rounds) and the Sweet 16 was in Lexington. It was great.”
Walz said he has kept in touch with Memnun since his visit.
“Of course, Elif plays and we were just talking earlier in the spring and he said he was coaching this team,” Walz said. “He asked if I would be interested. I love international basketball and I said sure I’ll do it. I’m looking forward to it.”
Walz will leave on Wednesday and be out of the country until July 16. He’ll miss just one live recruiting period in July.
Turkey will be in Group C with Finland, Italy and Poland. The first game will be July 6 against Italy.
Walz last coached a USA Basketball team in July of 2019 when he led the U19 national team to the FIBA World Cup title in Bangkok, Thailand. He was serving his third stint as coach for USA Basketball, Walz remains undefeated, improving to 16-0 with the gold medal win.
He coached the U-18 team to a gold medal and 6-0 record in 2018. He also guided the U23 team to a perfect 3-0 record at the U24 Four Nations Tournament in Tokyo in 2017. Walz has also earned two additional gold medals as an assistant coach for the 2014 USA Women’s U18 and 2015 USA U19 national teams.
