Andrew Betts

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Basketball player
Andrew Betts
Player information
Full name Andrew Richard Betts
Nickname Andy
birthday May 11, 1977 (43 years 112 days)
place of birth Ashby-de-la-Zouch (ENG),
United Kingdom
size 217 cm
position center
college Long Beach State
NBA draft 1998 , 50. Pick Charlotte Hornets
Clubs as active
1994–1997 LIU-Post Pioneers ( NCAA II) 1997–1998 CSU Long Beach 49ers (NCAA I) 1998–1999 Teamsystem Bologna 1999–2000 Bipop Carire 2000 Real Madrid 2000–2003 AEK Athens 2003–2005 TAU Vitoria 2005–2007 Joventut de Badalona 2007–2008 Cajasol Sevilla 2009–2010 Aris Thessaloniki 2010–2011 BK Budiwelnik Kiew 2011–2012 Lagun Aro GBCUnited StatesUnited States
United StatesUnited States
ItalyItaly
ItalyItaly
00000SpainSpain
GreeceGreece
SpainSpain
SpainSpain
SpainSpain
GreeceGreece
UkraineUkraine
SpainSpain
National team 1
1996-2006
2007-2009 		England
UK 		39
11
1 As of August 7, 2012

Andrew Richard Betts (born May 11, 1977 in Ashby-de-la-Zouch , North West Leicestershire ) is a British basketball player . After studying in the United States , Betts played in the three major European leagues in Italy , Greece and Spain . At the end of his career, he also played in the Ukraine in the 2010/11 season , before returning to the Spanish ACB league . Betts and his clubs won the national championships of Spain, Greece and Ukraine as well as the FIBA EuroCup 2006 with DKV Joventut de Badalona; with the British national team , he took part in the 2009 European Championship finals .

Career

At the age of 17, Betts moved to the USA in 1994 to study. Coming from Great Britain, which has little tradition in basketball, Betts, who was predestined for this sport because of his immense body size, was initially only offered an offer to study at a university that only had one college team in the NCAA Division II. He played for the Pioneers at Long Island University in Brookville and stayed there for three years before moving to the 49ers at California State University, Long Beach in the Big West Conference of Division I for the final year of his college career . In 1998 he was then selected in the NBA Draft by the professional club Charlotte Hornets from the highest endowed US professional league NBA , which did not take him under contract in the sequence.

After the end of the study returned Betts in 1998 to Europe and played for the Italian Cup winner and runner-Fortitudo in Bologna in Serie A . After first place in the main round, however, Fortitudo retired in the 1998/99 season, as in the Italian Cup competition, in the semi-final play-offs of the Italian championship. Also in the highest European club competition FIBA Euroleague they reached the semifinals and were eliminated there against the local rival Kinder Bologna in the Final Four tournament in the Olympiahalle Munich . Young player Betts switched to the league competitor and regional rival from Reggio nell'Emilia after a short time with the top European team , where he got more play and was able to increase his point yield to over ten points on average. The former play-off participant from Emilia-Romagna , however, had a disappointing playing time and after only seven wins in 30 games, he was relegated from the bottom of the table from the top Italian division. For the championship play-offs, Betts then moved to Spain, where he won the Spanish championship with Real Madrid.

For the following three years, from 2000, Betts played for Athlitiki Enosi Konstantinoupoleos from Athens in the Greek A1 Ethniki . In the 2000/01 season he defended the cup title with the club and reached the semi-finals in the newly created ULEB Euroleague , where they were eliminated against the Basque club TAU Cerámica. In 2002 they won a Greek championship for the first time after 32 years for AEK and thus intervened in the winning streak of local rival Panathinaikos Athens , who otherwise won all championship titles between 1998 and 2011. Betts scored almost a double-double in the Greek championship with an average of 10.6 points and 8.9 rebounds per game. In the ULEB Euroleague 2001/02 , which had meanwhile replaced the FIBA ​​Euroleague or Suproleague as the most prestigious club competition, you had to take precedence in the round of the 16 best teams in the "Athens Group" with Panathinaikos and Olympiakos Piraeus and KK Union Olimpija Ljubljana Panathinaikos who also won the title in the end. In the following season they lost the final series of the Greek championship against Panathinaikos, who thus regained the title. After a disastrous ULEB Euroleague 2002/03 with only one win in 14 games in the preliminary round, Betts left the club at the end of the season.

For the 2003/04 season, Betts signed a contract with TAU Cerámica in Vitoria-Gasteiz . With this team he won the 2004 Spanish Cup "Copa del Rey". After first place in the regular time of the ACB league , they were eliminated in the play-off semi-final series of the championship. In the following season, they again took first place in the final table and this time moved into the final series of the championship, in which they were defeated by their ex-club Real Madrid in just under five games. Also in the ULEB Euroleague 2004/05 they reached the final at the Final Four tournament in the Olympiahalle Moscow , after beating host PBK CSKA Moscow in the semifinals . In the final, however, the defending champion Maccabi Tel Aviv had to go first. Betts game shares went back with the Basque club and he moved for the 2005/06 season to the Catalan league rivals DKV Joventut from Badalona . In the Spanish championship they were eliminated in the semifinals against the eventual champions Unicaja Málaga , while in the FIBA EuroCup the Final Four tournament was reached, where, from Bett's point of view, the hosts were defeated again in the semifinals. After defeating BK Kiev they also clearly won the final against the Russian club BK Chimki . In the following season Joventut again reached the semi-final series for the Spanish championship, which was just lost to Real Madrid. For another season in the ACB league, Betts moved to Cajasol from Sevilla , with whom he missed the play-offs for the championship in the 2007/08 season.

The increasingly suffering from injury problems Betts suspended the beginning of the 2008/09 season and only signed a new contract with Aris from Thessaloniki in January 2009 . On his return to the Greek league, he reached the semi-final series with the club, which was lost to defending champion Panathinaikos. Against another Athens club GS Marousi they also lost the series for third place, which entitled the winner to qualify for the ULEB Euroleague 2009/10 . After Betts made his debut for the English national team in 1996, he reactivated his international career for the British national team, which was reorganized after the London Olympics in 2012 were awarded. With this team you could qualify for a European Championship finals for the first time in 2009, but where you eliminated in the group games of the first round after three defeats against the later semi-finalists Slovenia , Spain and Serbia in the first group stage. His club Aris Saloniki was finally allocated a starting place in the Euroleague qualification, in which they then again lost out against their national rival Marousi in the two-legged game. In the Eurocup 2009/10 of the ULEB they finished second in the group stage of the best 16 teams behind the German representative Alba Berlin , who had also failed in the Euroleague qualification against GS Marousi. As a result, they met in the quarter-finals on the later title holder Power Electronics Valencia from Spain, who later defeated Alba Berlin in the final and took the title.

For the 2010/11 season, Betts signed a contract with BK Budiwelnik from the Ukrainian capital Kiev , who play their home games in the Kiev Sports Palace , where Betts won his only international club title with DKV Joventut in 2006. Budiwelnik won another Ukrainian championship with Betts after a 14-year break. In the Eurocup 2010/11 they were eliminated from Betts' point of view again in the quarterfinals against a Spanish team, this time against his ex-club Cajasol Sevilla. Betts then returned to Spain for the 2011/12 season and played for Lagun Aro GBC again in the Basque Country, this time in San Sebastián . The basketball club of the province of Gipuzkoa reached the play-offs for the Spanish championship for the first time after fifth place in regular time, where they were eliminated in the quarter-finals as in the cup competition. After Betts decided to retire from the British national team at the beginning of 2011, he not only missed participation in the 2011 European Championship , but also the first time a British team had participated in the basketball competition at the 2012 Olympic Games since the 1948 Olympic Games London.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ NN 2009 Eurobasket. Great Britain. 15 - Andrew Betts. On: FIBA ​​website; Mies, Switzerland, undated in 2009. Retrieved February 4, 2019 (in English). (Indicates his place of birth as Coalville in the same district )
  2. ^ NN: Final Four, Boxscore 1999. ( Memento of April 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Archived from EuroLeague website; Barcelona, ​​March 13, 2012. Accessed February 4, 2019.
  3. ↑ DKV Crush Khimki To Claim EuroCup Title. FIBA Europa , April 9, 2006, accessed August 9, 2012 .
  4. ^ Andy Betts retires from international basketball. BBC , January 14, 2011, accessed August 9, 2012 .
personal data
SURNAME Betts, Andrew
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Betts, Andrew Richard (full name); Betts, Andy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English basketball player
DATE OF BIRTH May 11, 1977
PLACE OF BIRTH Ashby-de-la-Zouch in North West Leicestershire, England, UK