K-State guard Selton Miguel living dream with Angola national team ahead of Olympics
By all accounts, Selton Miguel had a promising freshman season for the Kansas State men’s basketball team.
The 6-foot-4 guard averaged 7.2 points and 3.1 rebounds per game, and he established himself as a defensive stopper late in the year. His future seems bright under K-State coach Bruce Weber, particularly if he can develop as a scorer.
“I want to improve everything, especially my left hand and my shot,” Miguel said. “They were both off last season. So that’s why I had to step it up on the defensive end and be the best defender on the team and make plays. I scored when I had to score. This season I really have to improve my jump shot and my left hand. Then the rest is going to come.”
In any other summer, Miguel would be toiling away in Manhattan as he worked to improve those aspects of his game, driving to his left against college teammates or shooting with a weighted ball as Weber looked on inside K-State’s training facility.
But he has found a different training ground. A better one.
For the past month, Miguel has been living in Barcelona, Spain as the youngest member of Angola’s national basketball team. He has been practicing with professionals for four hours each day as they prepare for the FIBA World Olympic Qualifying Tournament. Angola will play its first game against Poland on June 29 in Lithuania and then face Slovenia the following day.
Weber said K-State players are only getting fours of supervised practice time each week right now.
“It’s just an unbelievable experience for him,” Weber said. “I don’t think there is any doubt it will be great for him. He’s going to be playing against NBA guys. He keeps telling me, ‘We’re going to win, coach. Make sure you watch us. We’re going to win.’ We’ll see about that. But you have to admire his confidence.”
Miguel is, perhaps naively, hopeful that he will help his home country reach the Olympics later this summer, as the team won’t have Atlanta Hawks center Bruno Fernando on the inside as once was expected.
But there is no doubt one thing: His game has improved since he traveled across the Atlantic Ocean.
“I’m a more complete player now,” he said during a Zoom session on Thursday from Barcelona.
He shoots left-handed layups and floaters all day long against big, experienced competition. And he works on left-handed dribbling drills every chance he gets with the Angola coaches.
“I’m starting to do things I couldn’t do before,” Miguel said. “In these practices with these pros, I have been scoring with my left hand and I am still improving. They have bigger bodies. So I have to be stronger, take contact and still score with my left hand. It’s been fun.”
Miguel took an interesting path to this point. The K-State sophomore was born in Luanda, Angola and his first sport was naturally soccer. But he moved to Portugal as a teenager and fell in love with basketball. He worked so hard at his new sport that he was able to move to America and enroll at West Oaks Academy in Orlando, Florida for high school. From there, he caught Weber’s eye and earned a scholarship at K-State.
Along the way, he learned how to speak three different languages -- Portuguese, Spanish and English. Believe it or not, he’s also learning how to speak French. No matter how far he traveled, though, he never forgot about his Angolan roots. He said visiting his home country and seeing his extended family for the first time in three years as a major highlight of this experience.
But his main mission is to help Angola perform well next week. Playing basketball for his home country on the Olympic stage has long been one of Miguel’s biggest dreams.
“I played for my country growing up on their (junior) teams,” Miguel said. “Now I’m on the senior team and it’s been good. It’s tough, though, because I’m the only person here who doesn’t play pro overseas somewhere. You can say I have learned a lot.”
He is about to learn even more.
Miguel will face the most difficult challenge of his basketball career when he goes toe-to-toe with Dallas Mavericks star Luka Doncic when Angola plays Slovenia next week.
As Angola’s backup point guard, Miguel will be tasked with trying to defend one of the world’s best players every time he brings the ball up court.
“Everybody wants to go against him,” Miguel said. “He is a MVP candidate in the NBA. What more is there to say?”
If nothing else, games like that will provide a fun stage for Miguel to show how much he has improved with his left hand.
“He made really big strides with us this spring,” Weber said. “When he first got here, he was just more physical than everybody. Now he realizes he has to have other parts to his game and he has really worked on them. Add on this experience, playing against pros everyday, and I’m confident he will be a much better player next season.”