by Justin Goldsborough

They’re not the Fab Five or the "Flint"stones. They won’t lead NU to back-to-back NCAA title game appearances or three straight Final Fours. And their performance on the hardwood likely won’t earn them a nickname or induce Mitch Albom to write another bestseller.

But here in Evanston, NU’s trio of Euro-freshmen – Croatians Vedran Vukusic and Davor Duvancic along with Dane Thomas Soltau – is quietly settling into the world of Big Ten basketball and academia. And so far, they’re loving every minute of it.

“Northwestern is the greatest place I’ve ever been, [better than anywhere] in my country,” said Vukusic, who has already worked his way into the Wildcats’ starting lineup as a forward.

Whether they’re practicing jumpers at Welsh-Ryan Arena or jumping around the halls of their new home in Foster-Walker, Vukusic’s European teammates seem to agree that when it comes to Northwestern, there’s no place they’d rather be.

“So far it’s fine for me, living in Foster-Walker and all,” said Duvancic, also a forward. “Most of the people are fine and classes are very fine. And everyone helps us because they know we are from another country.”

Soltau, a 6-foot-10 center who came to NU only after St. Joseph's Univeristy renegged on a scholarship offer, seems to agree. His dreams of becoming a psychology major at Northwestern, however, are currently hanging in the balance.

“I looked at the schedule at first and you had like two classes on one day and I was like, ‘yes, only two classes.’ But no, cause you’ve got tons of classes and you’ve got study skills at night. I thought I was going to major in psychology, but the class is pretty hard that I’m taking right now, so I’m not sure.”

Now that they are here, Vukusic and Duvancic – who played on the same club team
in Croatia – and Soltau hope they can help the 'Cats rise from the Big Ten cellar and earn respect on a national, and now international, scene.

Still, how head coach Bill Carmody’s first recruiting class at Northwestern ended up looking like a list of high school foreign exchange students is a story in itself.

Carmody accepted the ‘Cats’ head coaching job in September of 2000, after Kevin O’Neil left town for an assistant’s job with the New York Knicks. Unfortunately for the ‘Cats, O’Neil left the program in shambles, marred by transfers and players who decided they couldn’t handle Big Ten basketball.

The former ‘Cat names are all familiar – Steve Lepore, Brody Deren, David Newman and Ben Johnson, to name a few. All are part of the debacle that has seen 11 of O’Neil’s recruits defect from the team in the last two years, an exodus large enough to trouble a program for years to come.

To make matters worse, when Carmody arrived at Northwestern, he said there wasn’t enough time to ink any substantial players from the United States during either the high-school signing periods.

“It was so hard last year to get anyone because we came in here [so late],” Carmody said. “These days, you have to recruit them since they’re sophomores. You can’t come in [when they’re] seniors. People would say, ‘Well, no, I already have it down to three schools.’ So we had to look elsewhere.”

Thus the ‘Cats, a team in dire need of impact players for the 2001 campaign, handed out no scholarships to players from the states. Such a stat, along with the 11 defections in the past two years, isn’t likely to incite fear in the hearts of Big Ten opponents.

So, while most NCAA coaches spent last summer figuring out how their teams and their new recruits would shape up in their respective conferences, Carmody took his passport and recruiting pitch overseas in hopes of discovering a diamond in the rough. Concentrating solely on European talent isn’t a normal recruiting strategy, as Carmody admits, especially when trying to build a winner. But according to the coach, the Cats were left with no choice.

Unfortunately for Carmody, Toni Kukoc was already playing for the Atlanta Hawks. And Dirk Nowitski seemed to like his life in Dallas – he couldn’t bare the thought of playing any place where scoring 100 points didn’t mean the fans received free chalupas. But Carmody was able to nab three guys who love basketball and it seems, love Northwestern too.

So far, Vukusic has been the only major freshman contributor, starting all five games, averaging 8.2 points and shooting a blistering 89 percent from three-point range. But Carmody is confident that Duvancic and Soltau, who he says is the best shooter out of
the three, will be contributing before long.

The rookies' infatuation with the university may be caused in part by the size of the arenas and the crowds. After NU’s first exhibition game, an 84-64 victory over the International Select All-Stars, Vukusic said the blockbuster crowd of 150 at Welsh-Ryan was the largest audience he’d ever played for. Soltau said he’s seen larger crowds, but it’s likely that profanity-loving student sections like Michigan’s State’s Izzone and Illinois’ Orange Crush will be an experiment for the Dane.

“I have played in front of 3,000 or 4,000 people,” Soltau said. “But if we get to 15,000, I haven’t tried that.”

Soltau and his Croatian teammates will likely try a lot of new things this year, such as a variety of classes, the dining delicacies of Foster-Walker and Monday nights at the Mark II Lounge. Carmody just hopes that in the next four years, they’ll find a way to win, gain respect for NU, and most importantly, that they don’t transfer.

Someone popped Justin Goldsborough's inflatable Broncos chair. He can be reached at j-goldsborough@northwestern.edu.

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