European Prospects

The Austrian big guy Jakob Pöltl is currently in the United States to take official visits at the Universities of California-Berkeley, Utah and Arizona. The 1995 born seven footer is an interesting player who made the headlines of the diverse B Division Youth Championships and he is currently in his decision process for the future of his career.

Pöltl is a long and quite athletic big guy who is playing on the highest professional level in his home country Austria right now. Nicely coordinated for his size, the newly elected All-Star of the Austrian league likes to finish close to the basket where he is quite effective despite being far from finished in his physical development. He scores currently at 73.5% in the Austrian league which is an excellent percentage for a player who still has a lot of potential physically. He needs to get stronger in his lower body to stay in position when being pushed around. The move to the United States will certainly help him to improve his physical shortcomings over the next years.

His leaping abilities and running skills help him to be a good factor in transition where he can get the ball and finish on the dunk even with taking one or two dribbles. Overall, he can be considered as being greatly skilled for a player of his size as his fundamentals are well developed and his footwork is good as well. This helps him to beat his direct opponents on the dribble but also be dangerous in the low post where he has however some development to do in back-to-the-baskets moves. His quickness is also a factor that makes him quite a good offensive rebounder.

On the defensive end, Pöltl hols his position against seasoned veterans in the Austrian league. Even if the level is not top-notch, it is impressive to see the impact of the 1995 born big guy on both ends of the court. His defensive rebounding is good but still improvable and he is also a nice outlook passer. Pöltl is also present as an effective shot blocker as he rejects 7.07% of all FG attempts by the opposing team while being on the court according to the RealGM database. After the first 15 games of the season, he has a PER of 25.92 for his team Arkadia Traiskirchen which only underlines his real effective way of playing basketball in his first real season on the professional level.

After having dominated during the different Youth Tournaments of the B Division and having an immediate impact in the highest Austrian league, going to play for a high-major program in the US seems like a logical step. Pöltl is considered a hard worker and having a great character and will to improve. This will certainly help him to make the next step whatever his choice is for the next season.