By BAKER ELLIS / Sports Editor 

ZARAGOZA, Spain – Spain Park’s Austin Wiley is a gold medalist. After running through the first six games of the FIBA U17 World Championships in Zaragoza, Spain, winning each of the first six games by an average score of 45 points, Wiley and the USA Basketball Men’s U17 World Championship Team went up against Turkey in the gold medal game on July 3, and beat the Turks by a final score of 96-56 to claim their gold medal.

After spotting Turkey (5-2) an 8-2 lead, Team USA (7-0) turned on the ignition, went on a 19-0 scoring spree and continued to dominate for a 96-56 golden victory on Sunday night. The win, which was the largest margin of victory in a men’s U17 title game, marked the fourth-straight gold medal for the USA in as many editions of the FIBA U17 World Championship for Men and now stand at a perfect 30-0 all-time in U17 play.

“For having a group like this come together as well as they have, especially on the defensive end, was a real tribute to Miles Simon and Mike Jones,” said USA U17 head coach Don Showalter (USA Basketball), who now owns a perfect 45-0 record at the helm of the USA U16/U17 teams since 2009. “It was one of those things where you don’t plan on having a team that’s going to be as quite as good as this, but every game, they got better and better. We really played well tonight.”

Spain Park’s Austin Wiley, a rising senior and Auburn commit, logged 82 minutes over the course of the tournament, and started in one game as well. Wiley averaged eight points and 6.4 rebounds per game for team USA, and his rebounding total was the second-highest on the team. In the finals, Wiley logged 10 minutes, went 4-for-4 from the free throw line, scored six points, pulled down five rebounds and had an assist and a block as well.

Not only did the USA run the table to finish with a perfect 7-0 record, the squad out rebounded opponents in all seven games, including 51-39 in the gold medal game, which was in large part Wiley’s doing.

Wiley, ranked a five-star prospect by a number of recruiting websites, was one of 12 players to make the U17 team from a group of 30 players who were invited to a tryout in Colorado Springs, Colo., before the tournament started.