BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH – NC State senior Engin Atsur played a major part in what was literally an earth-shaking performance by the Turkish national team at the FIBA World Championships this summer in Saitama, Japan.
And he’s hoping that his experiences there — when he and his underdog countrymen were one of the biggest surprises of the 24-team quadrennial championship with their sixth-place finish — will carry over for his final season with the Wolfpack.
“It was really an unbelievable experience,” Atsur said of his four-month stint with the Turkish national team. “I think it really helped my game and will be a big benefit for my last year at NC State.”
But it wasn’t exactly a fun-filled international vacation, even if Atsur did spend time in five different countries while preparing for and competing in the World Championships from Aug. 19-Sept. 2. It left him exhausted when he returned to Raleigh, some three weeks after classes had already begun.
“We had two practices a day for three months, plus a lot of games,” Atsur said. “It was like a whole ACC season over the summer. You can’t stay at that pace for a full year straight. It is not good for your body or for you mentally.”
Atsur quickly had to catch up on his schoolwork, which wasn’t exactly easy after nearly losing his fluency in English. That’s what happens when you spend an entire summer with no one but your Turkish teammates.
Since returning, he also had to nurse an injury to his right heel, which limited him during his individual workouts with NC State’s new coaching staff. So, instead of doing his conditioning on the court, he was limited to running on an underwater treadmill.
But new head coach Sidney Lowe needn’t worry: Atsur was eager to get started when practice began Oct. 13.
“I am ready to go,” Atsur said.
Before the season begins, however, Atsur relished his summer abroad, when he helped his national team to its best-ever finish in the World Championships. Granted, it is only the second time that Turkey has qualified for the 56-year-old event. The other time was in 2002, when Turkey finished ninth in Indianapolis.
And, after failing to qualify at the European Championships, Turkey made it into this year’s field only by a wild-card invitation, perhaps because Turkey will host the 2010 FIBA World Championships.
But Atsur and his teammates proved they belonged in the event by winning four of their five games in pool play, advancing to face Slovenia in the round of 16. Their medal chances were foiled when they lost to defending Olympic champion Argentina in the quarterfinals.
Turkey finished its stay in Japan with a loss to France in the fifth-place consolation game.
Atsur was a bit of a surprise selection for the national team, since Turkey had a veteran squad of international professional players. However, two of the country’s best players, Hedo Turkoglu of the Orlando Magic and Mehmet Okur of the Utah Jazz, begged off the team because of their fatigue from playing in the NBA.
Turkish coach Bogdan Tanjevic was not happy with their decisions and faced the difficult task of playing in the world’s biggest basketball tournament without his country’s top three players. That’s because shooting guard Serkan Erdogan was expected to miss the event with a knee injury.
Atsur got his invitation to be one of 24 players invited to the national team tryouts in February, and got immediate approval from former Wolfpack head coach Herb Sendek to go back home for the tryouts.
He barely had time to talk to Lowe about the opportunity — the only time the two met was on the day Lowe was announced as Sendek’s replacement, May 5. Immediately after the press conference, Lowe returned to the Detroit Pistons to finish out the NBA playoffs and Atsur started packing for home.
“I just talked to him a minute before we had our team meeting,” Atsur said. “I told him about this opportunity and that I was leaving in a week. He told me some things to work on and that was the only time we had a chance to talk face to face before I came back.”
After spending a week with his parents in his hometown of Istanbul, Atsur went to training camp, where he quickly made the first cut. Then the whole squad packed up and went to the ski-resort town of Bormio, Italy, a favorite training spot for European teams because of the altitude.
The team was cut to 12 at that point, and Atsur was one of five young players that Tanjevic kept on the roster, three of whom were members of the Turkish youth team that won the European U20 Championship in Ankara, Turkey, in July. Ersan Ilyasova, a 2005 second-round pick of the Milwaukee Bucks who spent most of last season playing in the NBA’s developmental league, was the MVP of that tournament.
Atsur went into the summer expecting to see most of his time at point guard, the position he will play almost exclusively for the backcourt-thin Wolfpack this coming season. That’s where he played in a trio of two-game tournaments in Turkey, Germany and South Korea that the Turkish team used as preparation for the World Championships.
Atsur and his teammates stayed in each location about a week, before heading to Japan for the World Championships in early August.
It didn’t take long for Turkey, as a wild-card team, to create some buzz in Japan. It eked out a two-point win over Lithuania and an eight-point win over Australia. Atsur didn’t play in either of those contests, but he did get into a 73-71 victory over Brazil, scoring four points on a three-pointer and a free throw.
By that time, Turkey’s top two three-point shooters, Erdogan and team captain Ibrahim Kutluay, were both hampered by injuries forcing Atsur to move back to the shooting guard position.
With Erdogan and Kutluay out, Atsur was Turkey’s leading scorer in a victory over Qatar, with 12 points in the contest. It was a victory that assured that the Turkish team would advance to the round of 16 for the first time in history.
Atsur played a critical part in Turkey’s 90-84 victory over Slovenia, burying two important three-pointers in the final four minutes for his only points of the game. His first shot swished while the shot-clock buzzer was going off, tying the game at 74, and the second, just a minute later, closed Slovenia’s lead to 79-77.
“He doesn’t have a big experience at the international level, but he has got a big heart and you saw that on the court today,” Erdogan said of his teammate Atsur.
An 83-58 loss to defending Olympic-champion Argentina and Manu Ginobili knocked Turkey out of medal contention, but a dramatic comeback in a classification game against Lithuania put Turkey in the fifth-place consolation game.
But not before Japan shuddered — at halftime of the Lithuania game, Atsur felt a rumble, something that seemed an awful lot like the 6.8 earthquake he experienced in Istanbul in 2003.
“Is it me, or is this place shaking?” Atsur asked a teammate.
No damage or injuries were reported following the quake, and the teams both went back out for the second half. Lithuania was in position to avenge its earlier loss to the Turks, and led the game by 11 points with two and a half minutes remaining.
Atsur hit a driving layup with 21 seconds remaining to cut Lithuania’s lead to three points, and teammate Ender Arslan made a rare game-tying, four-point play by making the first of two free throws, missing the second and throwing in a three-point prayer with 8.5 seconds left in regulation.
Atsur, who had nine points in the game, and his teammates pulled away in the overtime, earning a spot in the fifth-place consolation contest against France.
Turkey lost to France in the final game, finishing sixth overall among the two-dozen teams in the tournament. But Atsur and his fellow countrymen earned much respect for their performance with so many of the team’s top players off the roster for various injuries and fatigue. One writer covering the event called Turkey “the most resilient team in the world.”
And, given everything that has happened at NC State since the end of last season, with the loss of three seniors, one underclassman and two recruits, Atsur hopes he can bring the same sort of resiliency to the Wolfpack when the season starts next month.
Tim Peeler is managing editor of www.GoPack.com and a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker. He can be reached at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
Reprinted with permission from “The Wolfpacker” and Coman Publishing Co.
Courtesy: NC State
