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WOM EN'S BASKETBALL Agee named to U19 national team | andice Agee was awake at 5 a.m. on the day the USA Basketball U19 World Championships team was announced. "I couldn't sleep anymore," she said. "You know that feeling you get in your stomach? I was thinking I did whatever I could and that [whether] I made it or not, I knew I worked hard. But it's always nerve-wracking, because my last name is at the beginning. If my name isn't called AGEE first, I'm done." As it turned out, Agee had nothing to worry about. She made the 12-player roster and is set to compete in the FIBA U19 World Championships in Lithuania next month. Said the Lady Lion sophomore center, "I'm really excited and happy about it." Agee is coming off a freshman season at Penn State in which she played in 26 games, averaging 2.0 points, 1.8 rebounds and 0.5 blocks per game. Before beginning her college career, she played for the USA Basketball U18 national team at the FIBA Americas U18 Championship, which qualified the U19 squad for the U19 World Championships. She averaged 5.4 points, 3.0 rebounds, 1.2 blocks and 1.4 steals in five games, helping Team USA win the gold medal. Her best performance was an 11-point outburst against the Dominican Republic in pool play. The U19 team was selected by the USA Basketball Junior National Team Committee, which is chaired by UT Chattanooga coach Jim Foster. The team features six collegiate players, three of whom (Moriah Jefferson, Breanna Stewart and Morgan Tuck) play for Connecticut. Team USA will reconvene July 1 at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., before traveling to Europe for a July 11-14 tournament in the Canary Islands. That tournament C will feature U19 squads from Australia, Canada and Spain. The FIBA U19 Worlds will feature 16 teams. Lithuania earned an automatic berth as the tournament's host, while the remaining nations were determined by the five FIBA zone qualifiers in 2012. Agee expects to play mostly center for the U19 squad when tournament play begins July 18. "What I need to do is to play to my strengths and not to try and do anything outside of what I know I'm supposed to do," she said. "I'm supposed to defend, I'm supposed to get rebounds, I'm supposed to get offensive rebounds and put-backs, I'm supposed to box out and take care of the paint." NOTES The Lady Lions will play host to Notre Dame, coach Coquese Washington's alma mater, on Dec. 4 as part of the Big Ten/ACC Challenge. Washington played for and coached under longtime Irish coach Muffett McGraw before coming to Penn State. … Washington has been elected vice president/presidentelect of the Executive Committee for the Women's Basketball Coaches Association for the 2013-14 and 2014-15 academic years. She will automatically succeed Florida State's Sue Semrau as president in 2015-16 for a two-year term. Former PSU guard pens book Written during her career as a Penn State student-athlete, Gizelle Studevent's book "Bridges" was published in May and is on sale at Amazon.com. In the 278-page book, the recently graduated Lady Lion guard addresses divisive topics in hope of helping improve communication across cultural, political and generational divides. Studevent shares her personal struggles, which include a near-fatal car accident caused by a drunk driver and a battle against bullying in high school. Those experiences, combined with a trip to Africa prior to her freshman year at Penn State, inspired her to write. "I had my eyes opened to a lot of things in society as far as different groups are concerned – teachers, coaches, parents," she said. The book consists of "letters to people in society from this gen- eration talking a little bit about some of the major issues I saw growing up dealing with my situation and going to Africa – seeing what kind of things we put value on here." While at Penn State, Studevent created the anti-bullying program Penn State Athletes Take Action (PSATA). The student-athletes who take part in the program visit Mount Nittany Middle School monthly to talk about bullying and its impact.

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