{"id":47246,"date":"2018-06-27T18:54:18","date_gmt":"2018-06-28T00:54:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=47246"},"modified":"2018-06-27T18:56:14","modified_gmt":"2018-06-28T00:56:14","slug":"three-ole-miss-rebels-are-in-the-2018-world-cup-qualifiers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/three-ole-miss-rebels-are-in-the-2018-world-cup-qualifiers\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Ole Miss Rebels are in the 2018 World Cup Qualifiers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">After spending a week working out back in his native country of <strong>Poland<\/strong>, <strong>Ole Miss<\/strong> junior <strong>Dominik Olejniczak<\/strong> earned a spot on the country\u2019s national team to complete the first round of FIBA World Cup European Qualifiers. Olejniczak joins Rebel Basketball alums <strong>Tomasz Gielo<\/strong> and <strong>Sebastian Saiz<\/strong> in representing their countries in the qualifying games across Europe this week.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Although they were not at Ole Miss during the same time of their collegiate careers, Olejniczak and Gielo will be teammates for a pair of games. The Rebels will take the court for Poland on Thursday, June 28 in a matchup versus <strong>Lithuania<\/strong>. Three days later, the duo will join Poland in hitting the road to face <strong>Kosovo<\/strong> (July 1).<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_22680\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-22680\" style=\"width: 692px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/78-IMG_9690.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-22680 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/78-IMG_9690.jpg?resize=640%2C960\" alt=\"Ole Miss Forward Sebastian Saiz was the Rebels top player against Georgia Wedensday night, with 12 points, 13 rebounds, and 1 steal. Photograph by Newt Rayburn - \u00a9 The Local Voice\" width=\"640\" height=\"960\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/78-IMG_9690.jpg?w=692&amp;ssl=1 692w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/78-IMG_9690.jpg?resize=200%2C300&amp;ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/78-IMG_9690.jpg?resize=683%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 683w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-22680\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ole Miss Forward Sebastian Saiz is playing for Spain in the 2018 World Cup. Photograph by Newt Rayburn &#8211; \u00a9 The Local Voice<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Olejniczak is making his debut with Poland\u2019s top national team. The 7-footer is coming off his first season on the floor for Ole Miss Basketball after having to sit out one year due to transferring from <strong>Drake<\/strong>. Playing in all 32 games, including 11 starts, Olejniczak averaged 4.3 points per game and shot 53.1 percent from the floor. The <strong>Torun, Poland<\/strong>, native scored a season-high 16 points at <strong>Texas<\/strong>, going head-to-head against the No. 6 pick in the 2018 NBA Draft, <strong>Mohamed Bamba<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Gielo is no stranger to the Polish national team, playing in the previous four European Qualifiers for next year\u2019s FIBA World Cup. The Rebel has appeared in all four contests, averaging 5.5 points per game and 19.1 minutes per game. He spent the past season with <strong>Joventut Badalona<\/strong>, competing in the same professional league in Spain as his former teammate Saiz.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Saiz and Spain will play Slovenia to begin the final week of first round qualifiers (June 28). The No. 2 rebounder (1,008 boards) in Ole Miss history concludes European qualifying July 1 as Spain hosts <strong>Belarus<\/strong>. Saiz has played in all four of Spain\u2019s qualifying games thus far, averaging 5.3 points per game and 4.8 rebounds per game. He has shot 50 percent from the floor over 13.1 minutes per game. Saiz just completed his first season of professional basketball, playing for Burgos in his native country.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/TheLocalVoiceLigature-25web.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"25\" height=\"16\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14544 alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/TheLocalVoiceLigature-25web.jpg?resize=25%2C16\" alt=\"The Local Voice Ligature\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After spending a week working out back in his native country of Poland, Ole Miss junior Dominik Olejniczak<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":47247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[11413,12917,7067,12918,700,4618,6769,7596,12916],"class_list":["post-47246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-athletics","tag-11413","tag-dominik-olejniczak","tag-ole-miss","tag-poland","tag-rebels","tag-sebastian-saiz","tag-spain","tag-tomasz-gielo","tag-world-cup"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/2018-06-27-ThreeOleMissRebelsAreInTheWorldCup.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}