COLUMBUS – Ohio State standout guard Kelsey Mitchell has been invited to try out for the USA Basketball Women’s Under-23 National Team this summer.
Mitchell, a 2014 Princeton High School graduate and rising OSU senior, will be in Colorado Springs July 31-Aug. 4 for the training camp to select the 12-member U.S. roster at the United States Olympic Training Center, according to Gary Petit, Ohio State Assistant Director of Athletics Communications.
University of Louisville head women’s basketball coach Jeff Walz, a Northern Kentucky University and Highlands High School graduate, is the U.S. head coach.
If Mitchell makes the team, the 5-foot-8 guard will travel to Tokyo to compete in the Four Nations Tournament, which will run Aug. 12-15. Teams from the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan will compete.
Mitchell, who led Princeton to the Division I state title in 2014 and was a McDonald’s All American her senior year in high school, will be approaching numerous records at Ohio State for her senior season.
The three-time All-American has an opportunity to become the first Ohio State women’s basketball player to earn that honor four times during her senior season. She also has 368 career three-pointers and is 30 three-pointers away from the NCAA all-time mark, Petit said.
Here are some other milestones that Mitchell is approaching:
- Mitchell is 974 points away from the NCAA all-time scoring record. If Ohio State plays 35 games (like it has each of the last two seasons), she would need to average 27.8 points. She averaged 26.1 points as a sophomore.
- Mitchell is 55 three-point attempts away from breaking the Big Ten record and 239 away from breaking the all-time NCAA mark (she’s averaged 321 attempts per season over her first three years).
- Mitchell has made a three-pointer in 57 consecutive games. The all-time record is 80 consecutive games, Petit said. Ohio State has at least 31 games scheduled this season.
- Mitchell has an outside shot of making the most free throws in OSU history. She is 187 away from the mark. She made 182 her freshman year, 195 her sophomore year and 144 last year.
Mitchell helped lead the Buckeyes to 28 wins last season and their first Big Ten title since 2011. The team also advanced to the Sweet 16 for the second straight year -- the first back-to-back Sweet 16 appearance for the Buckeyes since the 1988 and 1989 seasons.
Mitchell was the catalyst for a Buckeye offense that finished fourth in the country in scoring at 85.7 points per game and set a new OSU single-season points record.
Ohio State opens the 2017-18 season in a Countdown to Columbusevent which also features Connecticut, Stanford and Louisville.
Mitchell received an internship with the BucksGoPro program and is working in the event management office, according to Petit. She’s been able to sit in on a meeting with the NCAA when those officials were in Columbus talking about logistics of hosting the Final Four.
