Kieron Achara

Kieron Achara
Player information
Full name	Kieron Robert Achara
birthday	3rd July 1983 (age 37)
place of birth	Stirling (SCO), United Kingdom
size	208 cm
position	Power Forward / Center
college	Duquesne
Club information
society	Air Avellino
league	Lega Basket Serie A
Clubs as active
2003–2008 Duquesne Dukes ( NCAA ) 2008–2009 GMAC Bologna 2009–2010 Angelico Biella 2010 Glasgow Rocks 2010–2011 Sigma Barcellona 2011–2012 Assignia Manresa 2012 Glasgow Rocks 2012–2013 EK Kavalas 2013–2014 Lukoil Akademik Since 2014 Air Avellino 00000 00000 0
National team 1
2002–2005 since 02008	Scotland UK	49
1 As of July 1, 2012

Kieron Robert Achara (born July 3, 1983 in Stirling , Scotland ) is a British basketball player of Nigerian descent. After studying in the United States , Achara played in the highest leagues in Italy and Spain . For the British national basketball team , he took part in the European Championship finals in 2009 and in the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

Career

Achara made her senior debut for the Fury from Falkirk at the age of 16 . In the summer of 2002 he was called up to the Scottish national team, which competed in the “Promotions Cup for Small Countries”, also known as Division C of FIBA Europe . After losing to their British rivals from Wales in the semi-finals, they finished third at the tournament in Malta . He then went to study in the USA, where he qualified for a university course at the Maine Central Institute prep school in Pittsfield . This school was previously attended by later NBA professionals such as Sam Cassell , Brad Miller and Cuttino Mobley . After a year he was accepted into Duquesne University in Pittsburgh . In their college basketball team Dukes , he played in the Atlantic 10 Conference of the NCAA . The Dukes were last qualified for a national basketball finals of the NCAA in the 1970s and were also during Achara's active time until 2008 without significant successes. Achara only played three games during the 2005/06 season and was then "redshirted" due to injury, which means that the playing time was not counted towards his college career of four years and is considered suspended. In 2008 he was first appointed to the squad of the newly formed British national basketball team, which had been reformed for two years on the occasion of the 2012 Olympic Games in London and brought together the best players from the previously separate national teams of England , Scotland and Wales. At the invitation of his British national team colleague Luol Deng , he was then also allowed to train with the NBA club Chicago Bulls , but had no prospect of a commitment by a team from the highest endowed US professional league.

For the season 2008/09 Achara then returned to Europe back and got a contract as a professional with Fortitudo in Bologna in the Italian Lega Basket Serie A . The former European top club, in 2004 still a finalist in the highest European club competition ULEB Euroleague , was in a financial crisis and was relegated to the penultimate at the end of the season. After the British national team had qualified for a European Championship finals for the first time , Achara was also in the squad when the British selection was eliminated in the first round of the title fights in Poland after three defeats against the later semi-finalists Slovenia , Spain and Serbia . While his former club Fortitudo tried a fresh start in the highest amateur league in Italy, Achara moved to the former league competitor from Biella . The participant in the play-offs of the previous season for the Italian championship took part in the European club competition Eurocup 2009/10 , where they were eliminated in the first group phase only because of the poorer direct comparison against the future German champions Brose Baskets . In the national championship, however, they were only slightly more successful than Fortitudo a season earlier and only just reached relegation as third from bottom, with Sebastiani Rieti being bottomed out of the table before the end of the season.

At the beginning of the 2010/11 season Achara was first with the runner-up and the only Scottish club in the British Basketball League , the Rocks from Glasgow under contract, before he used a release clause to return to Italy after just one game. There he played in the second Italian league LegADue for the newcomer from the Sicilian Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto . In the play-offs for promotion to Serie A you failed in the semi-final series on the main round first and later play-off winner from Casale Monferrato . Shortly before the start of the tournament, Achara was removed from the final squad of the British national team at the 2011 European Championship . In the 2011/12 season he played in the Spanish ACB league for the club from Manresa . With this club he reached a secured midfield position in the strong league. In the end he was back in the tournament squad of the British national team, which hosted the 2012 Olympic Games in London, but were eliminated early after only one win in five games in the preliminary round.

After Achara started the 2012/13 season again at the Rocks in Glasgow in the British Basketball League, he moved to Enosi Kalathosfairisis in Kavala in the Greek A1 Ethniki in mid-December . After only five wins this season, the club rose after five years of membership in the first division from bottom of the table. In the European Championship finals in 2013 was a newly formed British national, is Acharas operating time compared to Olympia tripled in 2012, surprised and failed after wins over Israel and Germany in a threesome comparison just wide of the way into the second round. In the 2013/14 season Achara first played for the series champion Lukoil Akademik from Sofia, who dominated Bulgaria . This was eliminated internationally in the Eurocup 2013/14 after the preliminary round, so that Achara left the club in mid-February 2014. A month later, Achara got another contract in the top Italian division with Air from Avellino , which is still fighting for a place in the championship play-offs.

family

While Achara's mother Marion is said to have been a former Scottish selection player in basketball, his older brother Idris is said to have participated in the basketball competitions of the 2000 Summer Paralympics for the British selection .

Web links

• ACHARA, KIERON - Profile on the ULEB website ( English )
• archive.fiba.com: Players - Kieron ACHARA (SCO) - Overview of participation in FIBA competitions (English)
• Great Britain Basketball - The Players: Kieron Achara - player profile on the website of the British Association
• Legabasket: Kieron Achara - player profile on the pages of Serie A ( Italian )
• Kieron Achara Stats - Duquesne Dukes - College season stats at statsheet.com
• Kieron Achara Profile - Duquesne University Official Athletic Site - Profile on Duquesne University's sports pages

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kieron Achara: Outlook's sunny for basketball star. The Scotsman , July 26, 2008, accessed August 19, 2012 . 
2. ↑ Kieron Achara has left the Glasgow Rocks. (No longer available online.) GlasgowRocks.co.uk, September 29, 2010, formerly original ; accessed on August 19, 2012 (English, media information).  ( 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.    
3. ↑ Legadue Basket: Kieron Achara. LegADue , accessed on August 19, 2012 (Italian, player statistics). 
4. ↑ Great Britain Trim Preliminary Roster. (No longer available online.) FIBA Europe , August 11, 2011, archived from the original on March 31, 2014 ; accessed on August 19, 2012 . 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.  
5. ↑ ACB.COM: Kieron Achara. Liga ACB , accessed August 19, 2012 (Spanish, player profile). 
6. ^ Kieron Achara Profile - Duquesne University Official Athletic Site / Personal. Duquesne University , 2007, accessed August 19, 2012 (English, player profile). 
7. ↑ Such a participation of his brother in Paralympic Games, as reported in Acharas College Profile (English, accessed August 19, 2012) and in the article by Mark Woods in the Herald Scotland (English, accessed August 19, 2012), can through the databases cannot be confirmed by paralympic.org (accessed August 19, 2012). Instead, John Fitzpatrick reports in the Daily Record (accessed August 19, 2012) of a participation in British championships 2005 in a class for people with intellectual disabilities. A Paralympic competition for people with such limitations only took place in Sydney 2000 and there was no British participation. After an en: manipulation scandal , such a competition was no longer held in Athens in 2004.