Christian Ast

Christian Ast
Player information
Full name	Christian Ralph Ast
birthday	20th July 1971 (age 49)
place of birth	Stuttgart, Federal Republic of Germany
size	203 cm
position	Power forward
college	Duke , American
Clubs as active
1990–1992 Duke Blue Devils ( NCAA ) 1993–1995 American Eagles (NCAA) 1995–1996 Alba Berlin 1996–1999 SSV ratiopharm Ulm 1999–2000 Telindus Mons-Hainaut 2000–2001 SSV ratiopharm Ulm 2001–2002 USC Heidelberg 2002–2003 1 FC Kaiserslautern 2003-2004 KuSG Leimen

Christian Ralph Ast (born July 20, 1971 in Stuttgart ) is a former German basketball player . Ast went to the United States as a youth national player , where he won the NCAA Division I Basketball Championship twice with the Duke Blue Devils in 1991 and 1992 . After he returned to Germany in 1995, he first reached the runner-up in 1996 with Alba Berlin . Ast then played for the first division club ratiopharm Ulm and spent a year in Belgium . Ast ended his active career in 2004 after playing in the 2nd basketball league for two more years and a one-year "finale" in the then third-class regional league .

Career

Ast grew up in Heidelberg and went to the United States as a student, where he graduated from a high school in Beltsville, Maryland . After winning the Maryland State Championships with the school team , he received a scholarship from Duke University in North Carolina , whose Blue Devils under coach Mike Krzyzewski was one of the most ambitious basketball teams of the NCAA and produced a particularly large number of later NBA professionals. While Ast had no win at the final round of the European Championship in 1990 with the German junior national team, Ast and his teammates, including the later Olympic champions and NBA All-Stars Christian Laettner and Grant Hill , won the prestigious in both 1991 and 1992 NCAA Division I Basketball Championship win. The last time they defended their title was the UCLA Bruins under coaching legend John Wooden in 1973 and only succeeded in 2007 with the Florida Gators . At the two championships, Ast was only used in a very dosed manner in the talented team by coach Krzyzewski, who later became Olympic champion and was later inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as national coach and averaged three minutes of playing time per use. He then moved to college in 1992; It caused a sensation more than ten years later when his championship rings, which he won with the Blue Devils, went on sale.

Ast went to the American University in Washington, DC in 1992 after the U22 European Championship, in which the German selection also took last place after only one opening win , where he worked for the Eagles college team at the time in the NCAA's Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) played. After he had to suspend a year of championship games due to his change of university according to the regulations of the NCAA, he was in his senior year 1995 after moving into the semi-finals of the CAA championship tournament in the "All-Tournament Team" of the five best players in the conference - Elected final round. However, the Eagles could not qualify for a nationwide postseason tournament of the NCAA. As a result of the limited success of the Eagles, among other things, the former Duke student was not included in the entry draft of the highest-endowed professional league NBA after completing his studies . Instead, Ast began a professional career in his home country, where he joined the reigning Korać Cup winner Alba Berlin, where Henrik Rödl was another German player who had won the NCAA championship following Ast in 1993. Here, however, he was injured right at the start of the season and came under the former German national coach and Alba's club coach Svetislav Pešić barely into play when the club in the National Basketball League 1995/96 for the last time in the 1990 series champion TSV Bayer 04 Leverkusen precedence in the play-off final series.

Ast then switched to the league competitor and German cup winner SSV ratiopharm in Ulm in 1996 . After Ulm had missed defending its title in the cup and making it into the play-offs for the championship in 1997, they finished third in the 1998 cup and surprisingly moved into the final series for the championship in 1997/98 as the main round seventh in the Bundesliga one remained without a win against Alba Berlin, who now rose to become the series champions. A year later, Ulm could no longer build on this success and in 1999 Ast moved abroad to the Belgian first division team in Mons in Hainaut . After a fifth place in the Belgian championship, Ast returned to Ulm for the 2000/01 Basketball Bundesliga . But the Ulm team got into a lurch and a return campaign by their long-time leader Jarvis Walker was unsuccessful, so that at the end of the season they were relegated from bottom of the table. Ast also relegated to the 2nd Bundesliga , but played in the following two seasons in the South Group for the clubs from Heidelberg and Kaiserslautern and then for a year for the regional league from Leimen .

Web links

• easyCredit BBL - Christian Ast - player profile on the easyCredit Basketball-Bundesliga website
• Christian Ast - Overview of participation in international FIBA tournaments on archive.fiba.com (English)
• Christian Ralph Ast | FIBA Europe - Player History - Statistics from European club competitions of FIBA Europe (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ John Roth: The Encyclopedia of Duke Basketball . 1st edition. Duke University Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0-8223-3904-5 , Ast, Christian, pp. 94 (American English, Books.Google.de ).
2. ↑ Christian Ast. DukeUpdate.com, accessed on January 7, 2015 (English, individual statistics). 
3. ↑ Michael Moore: Duke's 1st title ring for sale. DukeChronicle.com, April 26, 2005, accessed January 7, 2015 . 
4. ↑ American University - Men's Basketball Record Book 2014/15. (PDF (10.1 MB)) American University , p. 7 , accessed on January 8, 2015 (English). 
5. ↑ Reinhold Schnupp: Christian Ast experienced a changeable fate at Alba. Berliner Zeitung , April 19, 1996, accessed on January 7, 2015 (repro in the news archive). 
6. ^ Peter Wittig: Aufbruch (1994 to 2012) Part 2 - Chronicle of the USC Heidelberg (basketball): 2001/2002 season. (No longer available online.) USC Heidelberg , formerly in the original ; accessed on January 7, 2015 (see also the 2002/2003 season disposals).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
7. ^ Christian Ast basketball player profile. Eurobasket.com, accessed January 7, 2015 (English, player profile).