Basketball: Luka Brajkovic: Austria’s biggest talent since Jakob Pöltl

Luka Brajkovic enters his first season as a basketball player at Davidson College in the US NCAA with self-confidence and high expectations of himself. The 19-year-old said it would be too little for him just to be a role-player. Coach Bob McKillop also trusts the protégé from Vorarlberg a lot.

The Feldkircher wants to help his team as “Freshman”, as “Rookies” are called in the college league, “immediately”. Be it at the rebound, as a scorer or with assists, as he points out. “I want to be an important player in the first season.”

McKillop has also planned a leading role in the Wildcats team for the Power Forward. Brajkovic, as in the recent test against Washington & Lee (16 points, eight rebounds) on Tuesday (local time) against Cleveland State, can count on a place in the starting line-up at the start of the college championship.

The fact that he has already played against men in Austria’s second league is very helpful, said the 2.08-meter Power Forward. Postscript: “Especially in one-on-one situations.” It is not true in Davidson that college is also playing stubbornly, which he had been warned against. “Our coach wants the ball to move a lot.” And so be it.

In addition, the “Wildcats” are travelling at an enormously high speed. In any case, he had never played so fast before, Brajkovic stressed. The fact that college lasts over two times 20 and not four times ten minutes is not a major change. The frequent media timeouts are still unusual. The fact that attacks can last 30 and not only 24 seconds does not matter for Davidson. “We’re trying to lock up fast anyway.”

Before the game against Cleveland State he was “already nervous”, the 19-year-old admitted. “My expectations of me are high. It starts in front of your own audience. I hope I play well.”

According to Brajkovic, basketball is the number one sport in Davidson, where the current NBA superstar Stephen Curry played from 2006 to 2009 and is still omnipresent. As a basketball player, you’re “an interesting guy” here.

The Feldkircher was well received by the Wildcats team. “I’m really comfortable.” Brajkovic lives on campus with his Swedish teammate David Czerapowicz. With Nathan Ekwu from Nigeria, the Icelander Jon Axel Gudmundsson, the Serbian Dusan Kovacevic and the British Nelson Boachie-Yiadom next to the Austrian, the “Wildcats” are an international team.

The go-to guy on the crew will be Kellan Grady. The 21-year-old Guard is traded for the NBA Draft 2019 as a player who could be selected for position 15. He is taken with his new Austrian teammate. Luka is undoubtedly a backup, says Grady. “We want to do better than last season.” Davidson had won the Atlantic 10 Championship in 2018, but was eliminated in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

For Brajkovic, Davidson is all about school and basketball. It was “exhausting” because “nothing was given to him” at school. “But I couldn’t be happier here,” is the Vorarlberger’s summary. Time to “hang out” with the team mates remains after all. From time to time it also goes as a spectator to football or – as recently on Sunday – to football on campus, which is known in the USA as soccer.

For McKillop, who is acting as coach of the “Wildcats” in his 30th year, has thus also worked with curry and holds 554 victories and 340 defeats, the Feldkircher is not only a young man whom one would “wish to be his son-in-law”. As a person he is “reserved and respectful”, as a sportsman he trains diligently, is “unselfish” and “simply a fantastic team colleague”. Brajkovic won the confidence of the team very quickly. “And the viewers already love him.”

“If Luka continues to work hard, there is no upper limit for him,” says McKillop, who expects Brajkovic to “get better and better. The playing system in Davidson fits him well. In addition, Brajkovic will soon be able to finish from beyond the three-point line. “He has permission,” the coach told the APA. “Pick and Pop”, for example, is already being trained.