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Andrew Pleick ’04, Winston Davis ’04, Sean Knitter ’05, and Rob Dill ’04 have quite a bit in common.
All four played for coach Fran O’Hanlon. All four are still playing basketball, earning a decent living in leagues throughout Europe. And all four have encountered some of the usual problems that go along with playing on the Old Continent.
“A lot of people know difficult things can happen. If you don’t play for the love of the game, you shouldn’t play,” says Davis, who spent his first professional season in Germany on two different teams.
Davis left his first team, COOCOON Baskets Weiden, after it ran into financial problems.
“I tried to not let it de-motivate me and just take it in stride. I tried to make it as small a deal as I could,” says Davis, who finished this past season with BG Rotenburg of the German Regional League.
He was not the only former Lafayette basketball player forced to deal with challenges.
Dill was his teammate at Weiden and had to deal with the situation as well. Portuguese club Aveiro Basket Glicinias Esgueira still owes money to Pleick from his time with the team back in 2003. And Knitter is still owed money from his team Santarem Basket, which stopped competing in the Portuguese league in early March because it couldn’t pay its players.
“It’s really like Russian roulette when you get out of college. You really don’t know,” says Knitter, who despite the problems is still in good spirits.
“I figure it can’t get any worse. In between tears you have to try to laugh,” he jokes.
The former Leopards’ problems have been mainly off the court. On the court, all four found they were extremely well prepared for their European basketball experience by O’Hanlon.
“Coach makes you play an all-around game, not just do one thing. In his system you have to do everything that comes along in the game. And because I came up in that system, I’ve been able to fill different holes on different teams depending on what they need,” says Pleick, who has played for teams in Portugal, France, Switzerland, Austria, and this season, Sweden.
Dill adds, “I would definitely say that coach made a big deal about playing the right way and making right decisions. And I’ve definitely come to find that coaches are happy about me having those skills.”
But it wasn’t just O’Hanlon and basketball that prepared these four athletes for Europe. Playing basketball abroad usually means loads of free time that the players themselves had to figure out how to fill — being away from the classroom for the first time in ages.
“The time management I learned at Lafayette gave me the ability to realize when it’s necessary to give your priorities to some things over others,” says Dill.
“But it’s definitely been an adjustment. I’ve found the less you have to do, the even less you get done,” says Dill, who reads a lot and tries to make some electronic music.
Knitter says the free-time issue gets worse if you live in a small town — as he does in central Portugal.
“There’s not too much civilization here. There’s one movie theater and one McDonald’s. It’s not like Lisbon or some of the other big cities. I’ve watched millions of DVDs in my time here and hang around on the Internet all the time,” he says. “I’ve been here about seven months and I’m ready to get home and see my family. And see some more civilization.”
And while Dill, who was born in Germany and lived there before going to high school in the United States, loves the fact that he can play professional basketball, he has some concern about not yet using his Lafayette degree.
“Every year I don’t do something with my engineering degree, the more I lessen [its value],” he says.
Dill doesn’t know yet how he wants to solve the problem — especially since he loves playing hoops.
In true Lafayette fashion, the quartet of players looks out for fellow Leopards. For example, Pleick answered many questions by Knitter about playing and living in Europe before he came over for the season.
And Knitter offers a bit of advice to future Lafayette grads thinking of playing abroad.
“Do your research. Find a couple of people whom you respect and who know the business. And find a good agent,” he says. “That’s hard. You’ll have agents contacting you from different parts of the country. But it will help if you put in the time and effort.”
It may help an athlete have one fewer thing in common with Pleick, Davis, Knitter, and Dill.