Will Cherry

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Will Cherry
Player information
Full name	William Cherry
birthday	8th February 1991 (age 29)
place of birth	Oakland , California , United States
size	185 cm
position	Point Guard / Shooting Guard
college	Montana (Missoula)
Clubs as active
2009–2013 Montana Grizzlies ( NCAA ) 2014 Canton Charge 2014 Cleveland Cavaliers 2014–2015 Žalgiris Kaunas 2015–2016 Alba Berlin 00000 00000

Will Cherry (born February 8, 1991 in Oakland , California ) is an American basketball player . After studying in his home country, Cherry tried to get involved in the highest endowed professional league NBA through the NBA Summer League and the NBA Development League , where he had eight appearances for the Cleveland Cavaliers at the beginning of the 2014/15 season . After the end of this engagement, he initially continued his career in Europe, where he defended the title with the Lithuanian master Žalgiris Kaunas and won the national double . For the following basketball Bundesliga in 2015/16 , Cherry moved to the German first division club Alba Berlin, whom he also represents in the BBL All-Star Game of this league.

Career

In his senior year of high school, Cherry won the 2008 California State Championships unbeaten with the school team from McClymonds High School in his hometown and was named an MVP . He then began studying at the University of Montana - Missoula in the town of the same name, where he played for the university team Grizzlies from 2009, among others, together with Brian Qvale in the NCAA's Big Sky Conference . In Cherry's freshman season, trainer Wayne Tinkle's first tournament victory in the Big Sky Tournament 2010 was achieved, which meant the Grizzlies' seventh tournament victory in this competition. In the final victory, the team won with one point difference over the traditional rival and host Wildcats of Weber State University , which was led by Damian Lillard , also from Oakland, who was almost a year older and who later made it into the NBA permanently. The first game in the national NCAA finals tournament in 2010 they then lost despite a double-double by Qvale against the more highly rated Lobos of the University of New Mexico with six points difference. Another NCAA finals participation was missed the following year after the final defeat in the Big Sky Tournament against the Bears of the University of Northern Colorado and also lost in the first round of their first participation in the College Basketball Insider (CBI) Tournament. Without Qvale, it was enough to win two more Big Sky tournaments in the final against Weber State in 2012 and 2013. The opening games in the NCAA finals against the Badgers of the University of Wisconsin 2012 and the Orangemen of the Syracuse University 2013 were then lost very clearly. With the exception of his first season as a freshman , Cherry was always elected to the Big Sky First Team of the five best players in the Conference, twice named “ Defensive Player of the Year” by Big Sky and among the top ten in the Grizzlies' all-time leaderboards scored points and submissions as well as ball wins , with the latter category also being the best.

While Lillard made the direct jump to the NBA in the first round of the 2012 NBA Draft , Cherry was not selected in the Entry Draft of the highest endowed professional league a year later . Instead, he tried over the NBA Summer League 2013 with the New Orleans Pelicans , where he played with NBA sophomore Darius Miller . However, Cherry got no contract for the season and joined the batch from Canton (Ohio) in February 2014 in the minor league of the NBA Development League (D-League), the Cleveland Cavaliers' farm team . However, the batch was eliminated again at the end of the season in the first play-off round for the D-League championship. In the summer of 2014, Cherry got a contract with the Raptors after the Summer League with the Cavaliers, not at Lake Erie in Cleveland , but in Toronto on Lake Ontario , which, however, released him at the end of the season preparation at the end of October 2014. At the start of the season a week later, the Cavaliers finally signed him and used him in eight games in the 2014/15 season until the end of November, before this contract was terminated again. Then Cherry went to Europe and was signed by the Lithuanian champion Žalgiris from Kaunas , with whom he reached the second group stage of the 16 best teams in the highest-ranking European club competition ULEB Euroleague 2014/15 . After five wins in 14 games, including a home win against the then German runner-up Alba Berlin, they were eliminated here. After winning the national cup competition, however, the team was able to defend the championship title in Lithuania in 2015 in the final series against arch rivals Lietuvos rytas Vilnius . For the following season, Cherry got a one-year contract with Alba Berlin in the German capital. Cherry could only compete with the Berliners in the Eurocup 2015/16 ; there, however, the team reached the second group stage. After the first half of the 2015/16 Bundesliga basketball season , he and his team ranked second behind defending champion Brose Baskets and were invited to the BBL All-Star Game .

Web links

• easyCredit BBL - Will Cherry - player profile on the easyCredit Basketball-Bundesliga website
• CHERRY, WILL - Profile on the website of the Euroleague ( English )
• Will Cherry - player profile on basketball-reference.com
• University of Montana Athletics - Will Cherry - Profile on the sports websites (2013)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Clay Kallam: 2008 STATE BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP RECAPS: Division I Boys. (PDF (92 KB)) California Interscholastic Federation: CIFState.org, p. 4 , accessed on January 9, 2016 (English, media info; version from 2014). 
2. ↑ Associated Press : Martinez helps New Mexico shake pesky Montana. ESPN , March 19, 2010, accessed January 9, 2016 (English, match report). 
3. ^ Jamar tabbed Big Sky MVP, Cherry the top defensive player. University of Montana - Missoula , March 11, 2013, accessed January 9, 2016 (English, media info). 
4. ↑ Pride of Montana - 2015-16 Griz (Men's) Basketball (Yearbook). (PDF (11.6 MB)) University of Montana - Missoula , November 12, 2015, pp. 38, 48 , accessed on January 9, 2016 (English). 
5. ↑ Conrad Ziesch, Jan Buchholz: combo guard Will Cherry reinforces the albatrosses. Alba Berlin , August 31, 2015, accessed on January 9, 2016 (media info).