PHILADELPHIA – The FIBA Women's EuroBasket 2021 championship is set to begin later this week, and the University of Pennsylvania will have representation on the Slovakia women's national team with Nikola Kovacikova being selected to compete for her country.

This is familiar territory for Kovacikova, who played for the Slovakia's Senior National Team that took eighth place at the 2018 EuroBasket. She has been a member of the national team pool for several years and won a silver medal at the European U-20 championship. In addition, her mother Viera represented Slovakia in the 1990s, winning a silver medal at the 1997 EuroBasket.

Kovacikova transferred to Penn last year after a two-year stay at Georgetown University where she won the team's Newcomer of the Year award her freshman season and followed it up as the team's third-leading scorer her sophomore year.

Slovakia will compete in Group A to start off the EuroBasket with Sweden, Belarus and Spain. Its first game is on Thursday, June 17 in Valencia against Sweden.

For more details of the championship, click here.