Andrew Wiggins isn’t sugar-coating it.

With powerhouses like the United States, Spain and Lithuania not on the schedule this summer, Canada’s top player believes his squad should be seen as a favourite every night — not an underdog — despite not qualifying for the Olympics since 2000 and ranking just 25th in the world, according to FIBA.

“I want to win, I believe with all the talent we’ve got, I believe we’re the best team,” Wiggins said, without an ounce of bravado, but rather his typical brand of quiet confidence, on Friday.

And Wiggins likely has a point. No other country is bringing anywhere close to the number of NBA players to Olympic qualifying in Mexico at the end of the month. Nobody else is bringing a Wiggins, the reigning NBA rookie of the year. No other country boasts four players who were their conference’s player of the year while playing in the NCAA (Kelly Olynyk, Melvin Ejim, Andrew Nicholson and Nik Stauskas) or two No. 1 overall NBA draft picks (Wiggins and Anthony Bennett).

But talent isn’t everything in international basketball. There are different rules, grinding schedules, more cohesive and experienced opponents and questionable officiating to be adapted to.

Wiggins knows all that as well, and recognizes this Canadian group, while somewhat familiar with each other (Olynyk said he has been playing with Cory Joseph since he was four years old and many have AAU ties with each other), has spent the least amount of time assembled as one unit.

“We’ve just got to go in there and fight. We were the last team to get together, so we’ve got to work hard in practice, get the chemistry built,” Wiggins said.

Head coach Jay Triano agrees that coming together will be crucial. On that front, at least most of the athletes will be familiar with the offensive and defensive systems he is implementing. Nine of the 16 camp invitees played for the senior men last summer, another handful competed at last month’s Pan Am Games, the rest played at the junior levels.

“That’s one of the things we’ve started to do so that as a program Canada Basketball has a style of play and these guys are familiar with it,” Triano said.

“It’s a different level (for the younger players) but at least they’re familiar with what we’re trying to do.

“They’ve got to become familiar with each other and we’ve got to become familiar with what their strengths and weaknesses are, even though we know it. We’ve just got to make sure we put them in a position where we can be successful,” Triano said.

Triano cautioned that Canada “has a long way to go” in terms of learning the international game, but said the team’s veterans will help on that front.

Still, this is a young group, something that definitely isn’t lost on Triano.

“Our strength is our youth and our weakness is our youth,” Triano said with a smile.

“We’ve got to use it to our advantage and we’ve got to make sure that we turn it into a positive with high energy and the way we approach every single game. But we’re infants as far as the international game is concerned and knowing the tricks of the trade. We saw that in the gold-medal game against Brazil at the Pan Ams, a veteran team that knew exactly how to execute and move the ball, a team that was slower than us. But that’s why we played in the Pan Ams, so we could get that experience and bounce back from it.”

SAUCE IN THE HOUSE

For various reasons, Mississauga’s Stauskas has been on the outside looking in for a few summers now, but he’s thrilled to be back in the fold with Canada.

“It’s good to be back here, it was good to see that we got pretty much everybody out here participating,” Stauskas said.

Stauskas also pointed to Canada’s youth as a potential issue.

“I think the biggest thing for us is just going to be dealing with the physicality. I feel like we’re a pretty young team and some of the teams we’re going up against have a lot of veteran players who are really experienced at the international level,” Stauskas said.

“I experienced it in the NBA this year. When you’re 21 years old going up against a guy who is 28, 29 or 30 years old, who has been around the league a little bit, there’s that experience, the strength, there’s an awareness there that just takes some getting used to. But I feel like us being as young as we are, we can use that to our advantage. We’re possibly playing eight games in nine days, we can use that to our advantage where we can out-run teams a little bit.”

AROUND THE RIM

Triano on what he hopes will be Canada’s identity: “Obviously there’s going to be days where you don’t shoot the ball well and that’s going to happen, but there’s no excuse for not playing defence and coming up with rebounds and loose balls. That’s hopefully going to be our forte” ... Joel Embiid, who starred alongside Wiggins at Kansas for a season, will miss his second full season in a row due to foot problems. Yahoo Sports reported Saturday that Embiid’s second surgery on his right foot will take place on Tuesday and likely sideline him for the year.