These elite Shore basketball players will show off their skills in tour of Italy

When Andre Collins was emerging on the high school basketball scene at Crisfield high school, the idea of living and playing basketball outside of the United States was not something that was on his radar.

But his professional basketball career would eventually take him overseas to Italy, where he would play for a decade. Now, Collins is planning on taking a new generation of Eastern Shore basketball talent with him to Italy, where they will compete overseas in April.

Collins' Project Xposure: The Overseas Experience is set to take a group of local high school basketball players from Maryland and Delaware to Italy this April to play in a week-long basketball tournament against foreign competition. But for Collins, while basketball is the main event, he hopes that it will also open new doors and experiences for the young players as they travel overseas.

"The idea came from me wanting to expose kids from the Eastern Shore, whether it be Delaware or Maryland, to a bigger culture and a bigger world that's out here," Collins said. "For them to get an opportunity to see and experience different things and different lifestyles than what they would see on a normal, every day basis."

State and national championships in Collins' playing career

Collins, a former Crisfield player and state champion who went on to coach at his alma mater and James M. Bennett, was also a member of the University of Maryland's 2002 National Championship squad. He said the overseas trip idea originated a few years ago before the COVID-19 Pandemic hit, and now has officially come to fruition in 2023. And with the connections he still holds with his former teams, he was able to reach out to one of his old general managers and help create a tournament for them to play in this spring.

Throughout the week they are in Italy the players will be competing at a high level on the basketball court as a team, representing the basketball community of the Eastern Shore and developing their skills on the court. The international style of play and the way young players are developed in basketball is different than the American style, which was an adjustment Collins had to make for himself during this playing days. Now he hopes it could be a teaching experience for this group of players.

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"The kids will get an opportunity to play against some of the top prospects in Italy, as well as some of the prospects in Europe. Some of those younger guys that are overseas are already playing on professional teams, maybe not playing significant minutes, but they're getting experiences of being able to play with high-level basketball players," Collins said.

"And they get to see a different side of basketball. It's more fundamentally sound in Europe, that's just the way they play the game. So they'll get to experience that as well."

For Shore players, a unique European experience

But while the basketball is the main common denominator and foundation of the event, the real motivation for Collins in putting this together remains the off the court experience of being in and around foreign culture, and giving these kids an opportunity that wasn't available to him when he was in their shoes just a few decades ago.

"They're going to go there and everything is going to be different. It's going to be night and day. If we go in the grocery store, they're not going to be able to find the same type of cereal that they love," Collins said.

"They get to experience things like being around historical places like the Vatican. And they get to see historical landmarks like ehe Colosseum ... For me that's the biggest part of this trip. It's something that they would never experience outside while here on the Eastern Shore."

The group of players that makes up Collins' team includes Wi-Hi star senior Antwan Wilson, who currently leads the state of Maryland in points per game, and Seaford's Brent Ricketts, one of the top players in Delaware, along with plenty of other players from the Bayside, Henlopen and ESIAC conferences.

Project Xposure's target goal for fundraising for the trip is about $64,000 for all expenses, and when their flight takes off to Rome in April, Collins will feel like the work put in to make something like this happen has been done, regardless of the results of the basketball games they will play.

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"Once we board that plane, I will feel like 'Mission Accomplished.' No matter what happens in regards to the tournament part of it," Collins said. "We could go and lose every single game, and I would still feel like the mission was accomplished because, though we want to go and win every game, my main objective for this is to take these kids outside of the Eastern Shore and experience something of a lifetime.

"Not all but some of these kids are at risk, some of them live in tough environments and probably wouldn't experience this in high school if it wasn't for an opportunity like this."

The elite Shore players making the trip

Here are the players currently set to make the trip with Collins in April:

• Brent Ricketts - Seaford

• Antwan Wilson - Wicomico

• Akendre Matthews - Seaford

• Zion Mifflin - Seaford

• Aviyon Matthews - Seaford

• Marshall Bailey - Easton

• Clarence McBride Allen - Sussex Central

• La'Shaun Moody - Easton

• Dorell Little - Polytech

• Jayden Dukes - Cape Henlopen

• K'den Spears - Saint Peter & Paul's

• Trybe Wise - Stephen Decatur

This article originally appeared on Salisbury Daily Times: These elite Shore basketball players will show skills in tour of Italy