STANFORD, Calif. – Alanna Smith has been named to Australia's 12-player roster for the 2018 FIBA World Cup.
Smith made the team following a week-long camp in Canberra in mid-August. She is the only collegian on the squad alongside 11 professionals, including five players from Australia's Rio Olympic team and highlighted by Dallas Wings' center Liz Cambage.
The FIBA World Cup – formerly the FIBA World Championship – will be held in Tenerife, Spain from September 22-30. Australia, currently ranked fourth in the world, was drawn into Group B and will take on Nigeria, Argentina and Turkey in pool play before the quarterfinals get underway on September 26.
This will be Smith's second go-around with Australia's Senior Women's National Team. She made her debut and won silver at last summer's FIBA Asia Cup in Bangalore, India and was one of two Australian players to score in double figures for the tournament, averaging 10.8 points on 58.3 percent shooting and 5.3 rebounds.
Smith has appeared in three other youth tournaments for Australia. She led Australia to a third-place finish and was named to the All-Star Five at the FIBA U19 Women's World Championship in Chekhov, Russia in July 2015 after pacing her team in points (12.6), rebounds (7.0), blocks (2.7) and steals (1.3).
The 6-foot-4 senior topped all competitors in scoring at the 2014 FIBA Oceania U18 Championship for Women, averaging 21.0 points on 65.2 percent shooting to go along with 7.2 rebounds and also represented Australia at the 2012 FIBA U17 World Championship for Women in Amsterdam, averaging 5.6 points and 5.0 rebounds per game.
An All-Pac-12 performer in 2017-18, Smith is Stanford's leading returning scorer and rebounder. She started all 35 games as a junior and averaged 13.5 points, 7.0 rebounds and 1.77 blocks in 28.4 minutes. Smith finished eighth in the league with seven double-doubles and became the Cardinal's 40th 1,000-point scorer (1,004) in the season's final game against No. 3 Louisville.
Smith will be the sixth Stanford player to appear in a FIBA World Cup, joining Americans Jayne Appel (2010), Jennifer Azzi (1990, 1994, 1998), Sonja Henning (1990) and Nneka Ogwumike (2014) along with Enjoli Izidor, who played for Nigeria in 2006.
Ogwumike and her younger sister Chiney could join Smith in Tenerife. Both are part of the national team pool from which the United States' World Cup team will be selected following a training camp in South Carolina early next month.