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For the second time in as many summers, Harvard’s rising senior guard Chandler Piggé will represent the United States on the national stage, donning the red, white, and blue for the men’s 3x3 team at the Fédération Internationale du Sport Universitaire World University Games.

The games are held every two years and bring together student-athletes from around the world together for 12 days of competition in different sports.

This year, the games will be held in Bochum, Germany on July 17-20. Competing in Germany will be extra special for Piggé, who lived in Germany for five years before college, later completing a postgraduate year at Phillips Exeter Academy in the United States and joining the Harvard men’s basketball team.

“The U.S. is where I was born, Germany’s where I lived at least for my high school years. So it’s super special for me to be back, and I’m super excited,” Piggé, a Crimson Sports Editor, said about the opportunity to play in Germany.

He also added that this more fundamental style of basketball reminds him of Ivy League play where teams have high level athletes but not to the level of some of the larger conferences that compete for the national championship.

“When we play in Germany against these different countries, it’ll be cool to see how fundamentally sound they are,” he said.

Last summer, Piggé participated in the United States-China Summer Basketball Exchange in Beijing, China – an experience he said taught him a lot about competing and learning in a foreign country.

“China was a great experience playing at Tsinghua University with all the different athletes,” said Piggé. “I think, America, we’re definitely so much more athletically advanced than other countries.

“We learned a lot from being in China, just learning the details of basketball and how they approach every rep,” he added.

In Germany, Piggé will compete alongside three other Ivy League athletes on the team, where Columbia’s Avery Brown, Princeton’s Jackson Hicke, and Yale’s Nick Townsend will make up the rest of team USA.

Piggé looks forward to the opportunity to play with some of his term time rivals.

“It’s gonna be probably a little awkward at first. These are guys you compete with all year long to try to win the Ivy League and get to March Madness,” he said

He added that he has experience in gelling with other Ivy League players from his time in China last year.

“I think we’ll definitely all compete very hard against each other at training camp, kind of like our Ivy League matchups,” he said. “But, then, when it’s time to compete all together as one, it’ll be cool to see us band together for one cause.”

The competition consists of pool play on July 17-18, play-in and quarterfinals on July 19, and the semifinals and finals on July 20. Team USA fell in the semifinals last year to eventual runner-up Brazil. The Czech Republic took home gold.

Emulating his Olympic idols and bringing home the gold is a big goal for Piggé.

“I grew up watching the Olympics all the time,” he said. “It made me really realize how special it is to compete for your country and how even that can be more important than competing for an Ivy League championship or competing for an NBA Finals or EURO League Cup.”

Piggé made no mistake about his intentions for the tournament, “I’m looking forward to competing to try and win the gold for us.”

—Staff writer Reed M. Trimble can be reached at reed.trimble@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @ReedTrimble1.