OREM, Utah-Thursday, Utah Valley men’s basketball head coach Mark Pope announced another addition to his program during what has been a busy week for the Wolverines.
The Wolverines’ newest signee is Turkish national Ege Havsa, who previously played for the Fordham Rams of the Atlantic 10 Conference, coming via the grant-in-aid award.
Pope lauded Havsa, saying “Ege brings international flare and savvy to our program.”
The 6’4″ guard spent his freshman and sophomore seasons at Fordham and saw action in 49 games while making 11 starts for the Rams.
In 2017-18, Havsa played in 30 games and made all of his 11 career starts while amassing 4 points, 3.1 assists and 1.9 rebounds per game for Fordham.
Havsa also shot 45.1 percent from the field and nailed 72.4 percent of his free throw attempts.
Havsa’s points per possession plus/assist numbers were among the top two percent in the country. This is no small feat as presently, there are 351 teams in Division I.
Havsa, a native of Istanbul, Turkey, has previously played internationally, earning “best guard” honors at the U18 Turkish Championships.
In 2013, he played on the Turkish national team for the U16 European Championships and in 2017, he was a member of the U20 Turkish national team during the U20 European Championship tournament in Greece.
Havsa is a product of Esenyurt Okyanus High School of Istanbul and previously played club basketball with the Pertevniyal Basketball club where he was team captain and MVP.
He grew up playing for the Andaolu Efes grassroots program, which also produced NBA star Hidayet (Hedo) Turkoglu, the current president of the Turkish Basketball Federation.
Havsa will be eligible to play for the Wolverines in 2019-20 and have two seasons of eligibility remaining.
