Desrosiers, Johns Help Team USA Prep for Pan Am Games

It's in a familiar city, but it's a very different assignment this week for Jerome Desrosiers and Max Johns.

Desrosiers, a rising junior, and Johns, a rising sophomore, are in Providence, R.I., training with a Big East Conference all-star team that is set to head to Peru for the Pan American Games from July 31 through August 4.

"To get better, you have to play against people that are really good," Desrosiers said. "That's really what we're doing here. We're going to be playing against the Team USA that's going to represent the whole country in the Pan American Championships. I think that just makes us better and it gets us ready for the season."

Desrosiers and Johns are two of 12 players training alongside the Big East team on Providence College's campus in the same city the Tigers visit every year to face Brown.

Along with a city that Princeton players are used to visiting, some of the other faces training with Desrosiers and Johns are familiar too. Tai Bibbs and Randy Brumant from Columbia are two other players on the training squad, and among the Big East team, Princeton competed against Mustapha Heron and St. John's last December at Madison Square Garden.

The week began with a training session Sunday night and continues through a Thursday departure. Along the way, Monday saw an inter-squad scrimmage at Brown, and Tuesday and Wednesday night will bring a pair of scrimmages matching the Big East team against Desrosiers' and Johns' team.

Another wrinkle of the training week is getting acclimated to international basketball rules, which will be used at the Pan American Games. Desrosiers, from Quebec, said he'd had the chance to play under those rules in competition with Canadian national teams.

"We play FIBA rules, because that's what they want to practice," Desrosiers said. "You also have to adjust to that. Farther 3-point line, different basketballs."

For Desrosiers, the 2019-20 season represents the start of the second half of his career, one that has seen him play in 55 games over his first two seasons and average 5.6 points a game. In the Tigers' upset of No. 17 Arizona State last December in Tempe, Desrosiers put in a career-high 16 points, the ninth of 12 double-figure scoring games for him so far at Princeton.

For Johns, it's a chance to begin building on a freshman season that saw him play consistent double-digit minutes by February, closing the season on a 10-game streak in which he played at least 10 minutes every time out. Johns started three times as a rookie, including both games on the final weekend of the regular season. In the back half of that last weekend, in Jadwin Gym against Yale, Johns put in 10 points for his best-scoring outing against a Division I opponent.

With Princeton losing two players with All-Ivy League credentials from last season's team, both Desrosiers and Johns figure to play a big role in determining the course of Princeton's 2019-20 season.

"I think we already had a pretty good connection coming in," Desrosiers said of himself and Johns. "This is more about just playing, and playing against good competition. We already played a lot last year together, so I think the connection is already built. This just reinforces it more."
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Check the Princeton men's basketball Instagram for updates from the week at @princetonmensbasketball.

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