Haukur Pálsson

Haukur Pálsson
Player information
Full name	Haukur Helgi Pálsson
Nickname	Hawk
birthday	May 28, 1992
place of birth	Reykjavík, Iceland
size	197 cm
position	Small forward
college	Maryland (College Park)
Club information
society	Rouen Métropole Basket
league	LNB Pro B
Clubs as active
2008–2009 Stella Azzurra Rome 2010–2011 Maryland Terrapins ( NCAA ) 2011–2013 Bàsquet Manresa 2013–2014 CB Breogán 2014–2015 LF Basket Norrbotten 2015 Laboral Kutxa Baskonia 2015 Central German BC 2015–2016 UMF Njarðvík Since 2016 Rouen Métropole Basket 00000 00000 0
National team 1
2011–	Iceland	40
1 As of October 4, 2015

Haukur Helgi Pálsson (born May 28, 1992 in Reykjavík ) is an Icelandic basketball player . As a talent he switched abroad at the age of 16, where he first played for a year in Italy and then improved his skills during a study trip to the United States . Haukur Pálsson then played for various clubs in Spain for three years before moving to Sweden in the 2014/15 season . Subsequently, only brief engagements followed in the highest divisions in Spain, in Central German BC in Germany and in his home country. Since 2016 Pálsson has been playing in the second French league LNB Pro B for Rouen Métropole Basket. With the Icelandic national basketball team, Haukur Pálsson took part in the 2015 European Championship finals .

Career

Haukur Pálsson went to the Italian capital Rome for one year in 2008 at the age of 16 , where he played basketball for the traditional club Stella Azzurra . The men's team until the late 1970s, first class and also the European Cup participants, but at the time played only viertklassig in Serie B. Then was Haukur Pálsson for a year at the Montverde Academy at the same place in Florida , where he held a preparatory year the conditions for studying in the United States. Here he got a place in 2010 at the University of Maryland, College Park , whose renowned college team Terrapins played in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) of the NCAA . The particularly strong ACC offers optimal conditions to attract the interest of the clubs of the highest endowed professional league NBA with good performances . And Haukur Pálsson was able to secure promising minutes of playing time in the talented team in his first year as a " freshman " and was considered a possible candidate for the starting five in his second year after the age-related departure of teammates . But after an individually strong U20 junior European championship tournament of the weaker selection teams in Division B, in which Haukur Pálsson put on a double-double on average per game, he changed his plans and dropped out.

In the summer of 2011, Haukur Pálsson signed a professional contract directly with Bàsquet Assignia from Manresa in the Spanish ACB league , which is considered one of the most powerful leagues in Europe. Here he did not get along well as a junior player and achieved only low success rates in the following two seasons with operating times of ten minutes and less per game with a few attempts to throw. After a twelfth place in 2012, Bruixa d'Or , so the team's new name , reached the last place in the 2012/13 season after only six victories of the season, which was only enough to stay in the league through the waiver of other teams. However, Haukur Pálsson played in the 2013/14 season for the Spanish second division club CB Breogán from Lugo in the LEB Oro , who missed the play-off semi- final series for promotion and a return to the top division after the fourth main round place . In the second division he got along better and averaged a good six points and almost three rebounds in a good 20 minutes of playing time per game . For the following 2014/15 season, however, Haukur Pálsson moved to the Swedish basketball league, in which many teammates from the Icelandic men's national team were already active. At Basket Norrbotten from Luleå , he showed decent performances, but lost with his team as fourth in the main round in the first play-off round against former runner-up Sundsvall Dragons, who had four Icelandic national players . Then Haukur Pálsson joined the Spanish top club Laboral Kutxa Baskonia from Vitoria-Gasteiz in April 2015, but they only used him in one game and released him from his obligations after three weeks before the end of their own season.

In the Icelandic national team, Haukur Pálsson completed 35 appearances by summer 2015. While the men's selection could only celebrate notable successes at the games of the small states of Europe , in the summer of 2014 they had already met with the experienced professionals Jón Arnór Stefánsson , Logi Gunnarsson , Jakob Sigurðarson , Hörður Vilhjálmsson and Pavel Ermolinskij , all of them had played abroad and, among other things, in Spanish leagues, qualified for the finals of the European Championship for the first time . At the 2015 European Championship finals , the Icelandic selection played their first final game against hosts Germany in the Mercedes-Benz Arena in Berlin . The 65:71 defeat against the hosts remained the closest defeat in the tournament, even if the already qualified Turkish selection needed extra time in the final group game to defeat the winless Icelandic selection. Shortly before the start of the 2015/16 season , Haukur Pálsson signed a six-week contract with Mitteldeutscher BC in Weißenfels , the former club of his national team colleague Hörður Vilhjálmsson. There he temporarily replaced the injured TaShawn Thomas , but retired after only five appearances in the bottom of the table without a win. Then Haukur Pálsson returned to his homeland, where he joined Ungmennafélag Njarðvíkur. As in the previous year, the team lost the play-off semi-final series for the championship in just five games against defending champions KR Reykjavík . The following season, Haukur Pálsson got a contract in France with the first division relegated Métropole Basket in Rouen .

Web links

• Haukur Pálsson - Overview of participation in international FIBA tournaments on archive.fiba.com (English)
• ACB.COM: Haukur Palsson - player profile on the website of the Liga ACB ( Spanish )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} A-landslið karla: Leikjafjöldi leikmanna. KKÍ , accessed June 17, 2016 (Icelandic, list of record-breaking national players). 
2. ^ Haukur Palsson Biography. UMCP , 2010, accessed on September 6, 2015 (English, profile on sports websites). 
3. ↑ Jeff Barker: Haukur Palsson a pleasant surprise for Terps. The Baltimore Sun , February 8, 2011, accessed September 6, 2015 . 
4. ^ Haukur Pálsson / U20 European Championship for Men (2011). FIBA Europe , accessed on September 6, 2015 (English, tournament statistics). 
5. ↑ PALSSON, HAUKUR HELGI. FEB , accessed on September 6, 2015 (Spanish, player profile with statistics). 
6. ↑ Haukur Palsson no continuará en Laboral Kutxa Baskonia. ACB League , May 4, 2015, accessed on September 6, 2015 (Spanish, media info Laboral Kutxa Baskonia). 
7. ^ Dino Reisner: Six-week contract for Haukur Palsson. (No longer available online.) Mitteldeutscher BC , October 3, 2015, archived from the original on October 5, 2015 ; accessed on October 4, 2015 (media info). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
8. ↑ BBL - 34523 Haukur PALSSON. Basketball Bundesliga , accessed on July 31, 2016 (player profile with statistics). 

Note: Icelanders are referred to by their first name or first and last name, but not just their surname. Further information can be found under Icelandic personal name .