When Arizona tips off against top-seeded Duke tonight you can bet Henri Veesaar’s parents will be tuning in from Estonia — even if it is 3:39 in the morning.
This is assuming, of course, that mom Pille Veesaar isn’t resting up for a table tennis tournament.
Henri Veesaar, the Wildcats redshirt sophomore who has started to garner the attention of NBA scouts, jokes that he isn’t exactly from a family of standout athletes. (Asked if his dad, a former semipro basketball player, ever coached him, Henri deadpanned, “He tried” before bursting into laughter.) But his mom might disagree, given her dominance on the adult table-tennis circuit around Estonia. At a tournament last spring, Pille Veesaar was the only player, man or woman, to medal in three separate events: women individuals over 50, women’s doubles over 50 and mixed doubles over 50.
Henri Veesaar will need to have a big game if the Wildcats have any hope of knocking the Blue Devils and future NBA lottery pick Cooper Flagg. Arizona will need Veesaar to play like he did vs. Kansas (19 points on 7-of-11 shooting and four rebounds) in the Big 12 conference tournament semifinals and less like he did against Oregon (three points, four fouls) in UA’s second-round win last weekend. Though he was mostly a non-factor in the win over the Ducks, everyone in the gym understands that with Veesaar’s 7-foot build, he is on the brink of becoming a dominant college player. He averages 9.3 points, 5.0 rebounds and shooting nearly 60 percent off the bench.
Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd has a long history of unearthing talented international big men and turning them into NBA draft picks, dating back to Lloyd’s 20 years as an assistant at Gonzaga. Guys like Robert Sacre, Ronny Turiaf, Przemek Karnowski, Rui Hachimura and Killian Tillie were all Lloyd recruits (he also helped bring in a guy named Domantas Sabonis, though he was hardly under the radar).
Veesaar is Lloyd’s latest project, and the big man is poised to explode soon. There’s no doubt that Lloyd and the Wildcats would like that explosion today.