The basketball camp launched by Weber State’s finest has invited a WSU player for the second time in as many years.

Invitations to Damian Lillard’s second inaugural Formula Zero camp are being announced this week and among those revealed Tuesday morning: Weber State senior shooting guard Steven Verplancken Jr.

Verplancken will join a select group of 39 other players (20 college players, 20 high schoolers) in Phoenix, Arizona, for this month’s event. In the inaugural 2022 camp, WSU star forward Dillon Jones traveled to Portland to participate.

Verplancken, a native of the Dominican Republic and of Belgium, joined Weber State last summer after two years at Southern Illinois. He doubled his SIU scoring average at 13.2 points per game, and shot career bests overall (45.9%) and from the 3-point line (41.7%).

Other college players announced to have received invitations include Marquette’s Tyler Kolek, Virginia’s Blake Buchanan, South Dakota State’s Zeke Mayo, TCU’s Jameer Nelson Jr. and Baylor’s Jakobe Walter, among others.

The 2022 group of “college counselors” produced five NBA Draft picks, including Baylor’s Keyonte George, drafted by the Utah Jazz, as well as first-rounders Marcus Sasser and Kris Murray, and second-rounders Jalen Wilson and Jalen Slawson.

Lillard’s stated goal for the camp is to invite a certain type of player he hopes to shape — “the guys who are underrated, underappreciated, the tough ones, the dogs,” Lillard explained last year. “We want to put them all in the same place and just try to make them better when they leave.”

For four days and five nights last season, Jones participated in on-court skill and off-court character development. Last year’s group of current or former NBA players to instruct the campers included Lillard, Mikal Bridges, CJ McCollum, Matisse Thybulle, Anfernee Simons, Nassir Little, Evan Turner and Chris Kaman.

“You’ve got to be stable and strong mentally, you’ve got to be sturdy and have something you can stand on … I want to help them have the stuff that’s not just the talent and is not given to them,” Lillard said at last year’s camp.

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