Drexel Freshmen Guard From Iceland, Heating It Up On The Court
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- When you hear "Iceland," you simply think, ice. Basketball definitely isn't the first thing that comes to mind, but that's about to change.
"Greenland is more ice and Iceland is more green. My kids taught me that after we found out we had a player from Iceland," said Drexel's first-year head basketball coach Zach Spiker.
"We in Iceland, we don't live in igloos or stuff like that, so, we are not that far different from America," said freshman guard Kari Jonsson. He hails from Hafnarfjorour. "It's a small town right outside of Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland."
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Jonsson is a lanky, 6'3" guard, with a sweet shooting touch. He is hitting an outrageous 45.2 percent from three-point range.
Iceland is not exactly a hotbed for College basketball recruiting, so how did Jonsson wind up at Drexel?
A friend of assistant coach Rob O'Driscoll tipped him off. "We needed a couple guards for our roster," O'Driscoll said. He explained that his friend said you have to go see this kid from Iceland and two days after getting his job, he was on a plane to go see Jonsson.
Spiker says Jonsson is the kind of kid he wants to build the program around. "As you continue to surround yourself with good people, hopefully good things happen and you get good players and good players attract great players and Kari Jonsson is a perfect example of getting a good player into a system and people being excited to play with him and watch him play too."
Jonsson says he's adjusting pretty well to college life in the United States and he speaks English very well, but he and his coach say sometimes language is an issue. "The language barrier is with me having to understand him. The guys don't have an issue, but I'm always like 'what's he saying?'," Spiker said.
"Sometimes when I try to talk really fast or loud, it might come from my mouth a little different than I was hoping it would be," Jonsson said.
