The crowd at the XL Center is on its feet. The Huskies have just erased an 11-point halftime deficit and now Kemba Walker has the ball with a chance to give UConn it’s first lead of the second half. Marquette chooses to double-team him, leaving Niels Giffey open in the corner. Walker finds him, dishes him the ball, and Giffey takes the shot.
Nothing but net.
The basket blew the roof off the XL Center. Marquette’s coach Buzz Williams was forced to call a timeout, causing the UConn bench to clear and prompting Big Red’s U-C-O-N-N chant. The team mobbed Giffey, with Tyler Olander jumping off the bench first and leading the charge. He got there with a huge grin on his face and chest bumped Giffey.
“That’s the way to go!” Olander screamed.
In an up and down season for the two freshmen, the moment exemplified the unique bond that these two unlikely teammates have developed since joining the UConn program.
Like step brothers
Niels Giffey and Tyler Olander are both freshman on the men’s basketball team. Giffey is from Berlin, Germany and Olander, by contrast, is a local product who played his high school ball within walking distance of campus at the nearby E.O. Smith High School. They are also roommates, and despite the vast differences in their backgrounds, they have become very close friends since arriving on campus this past summer.
“Me and Niels? I don’t even know how to describe our relationship,” Olander said. “We’re really good friends and we agree on a lot of stuff. With Niels, it’s really easy to get along with him just because he’s down for whatever. We get along real well, we always go to the dining hall and whatever, stuff like that. We can talk to each other about whatever.”
Olander said their relationship is similar to Dale and Brennan’s from the movie “Step Brothers,” and that they often come up with “random, funny, out-of-nowhere stuff” to do around campus and in their small dorm room in Hilltop. And like in the movie, some of their hijinks seem almost too bizarre to be true.
“Recently, this weekend, Niels came running out the bathroom at me and tried to do a flying kick, he tried to kick me while jumping,” Olander said. “He ran out of the bathroom through our door, and you notice you can’t really run through our room at all, and he just tried to jump and kick me. And it completely failed, he ended up landing on my desk or something, I was like ‘Niels what are you doing?’”
Olander explained that the reason why Giffey tried to dropkick him was because earlier, they had both been in the bathroom using the urinals next to each other, and after Olander finished first, he pushed Giffey as he left so he would “mess up a little.”
“After, he told me that all he was thinking was ‘I’ve got to get him back for doing that,’” Olander said.
Evidently, trying to dropkick him was the best solution.
Olander also recounted a story about how he and Giffey had recently been hanging out with a couple of girls, when Giffey suddenly started singing German drinking songs. Stories like this are apparently the norm for these two.
It’s actually somewhat remarkable how well the two have taken to each other, especially considering that they did not choose to be roommates originally.
“I don’t know who decided that,” Giffey said.
Giffey described his and Tyler’s first meeting as an interesting one, and that he first found out about his roommate assignment as he walked in.
“I walked in here, and this side over here was a huge mess, and on my side there was nothing, and he was sleeping, there was no light on,” Giffey said. “So I just walked in, flipped the light on and coach LaFleur is like ‘Hey, there’s Tyler, he’s your new roommate, why don’t you just show him around?’ And Tyler is like ‘…what?’”
“Yeah I was knocked out and he woke me up,” Olander said. “They told me he was coming but I guess I fell asleep or something. But he came in and kind of put his stuff away. He was hungry so we went down to the Union to get some food, started talking and stuff, so it was pretty good I guess for a first meeting.”
Culture shock
Shortly after arriving in Storrs, Giffey found that life in America isn’t quite the same as what he was accustomed to in Europe.
Besides the time difference, which took him about a week to adjust to, Giffey struggled initially with some things that many Americans consider to be normal.
“I wasn’t used to the air conditioning,” Giffey said. “I mean there is air conditioning everywhere, and I just got sick for a little time. I was like ‘why do you Americans have air conditioning everywhere?’”
Giffey explained that in Europe, they don’t use much air conditioning, even if it is scorching hot outside. He said that he also found it odd that during the summer he’d be in a dining hall and see people wearing heavy sweaters.
“It’s just kind of strange, you know what I mean?” Giffey said. “If you go into a house and it’s mad cold, then you go out and it’s mad hot?”
According to Olander, the air conditioning wasn’t the only temperature related adjustment Giffey had trouble getting used to at first.
“Some of the stuff was kind of funny, I remember one day we were just in the cafeteria and he was like ‘Dammit!’ And I was like ‘What?’ And he’s like ‘I hate how your drinks are always so cold,’” Olander said. “He’s like ‘Yeah, in Germany, the drinks are never cold, if you want it cold you have to put ice in them, but here the drinks are already kind of cold and you can put more ice in them to make them colder. I was like ‘What?’ That was kind of crazy to me. ‘The drinks are too cold?’”
Enosch Wolf, who was sitting on the bed next to Olander as he was speaking, started to laugh during this story and chimed in.
“He told me about that too, and it’s kind of true,” Wolf said. “In Germany, if you want your drinks cold, you tell people to put ice in it. And here it always comes with ice and it’s always so cold. So I can picture Niels being like ‘Agh, it’s so cold!”
There were other adjustments for Giffey to make too, more cultural than anything else. For instance, Storrs is a much more rural area than his native Berlin. Also, the popularity of football compared to soccer is another stark difference. Regardless, Giffey settled in over time, and now his only focus, like his teammates’, is on basketball.
Being a big man on campus
Giffey and Olander’s dorm room is not unlike any other room you might find a pair of freshmen living in. When you walk in, you see two beds, one on each side of the room. Surrounding each bed is a desk and some decorations.
On Giffey’s side is a big, brown Maui Invitational beach towel that covers the wall like a tapestry. There is a necklace of hula flowers hung on the wall, and a tiny surfboard tied to the shade. By his desk, which sits at the foot of his bed, a team picture is hung on the wall, and under the bed, some clothes and belongings are strewn about, and several pairs of basketball shoes are lined up neatly.
On Olander’s side, however, it looks like a bomb went off. Under the bed is a pile of clothes so deep that you could easily get lost in it. On the wall hangs two old basketball jerseys, Olander’s white E.O. Smith jersey, and his red Xpressions Elite AAU jersey. Above his pillow, two crosses hang from the wall, and at the foot of his bed there is a big, cumbersome TV that’s missing it’s cable wire.
Olander acknowledged that his side is kind of a pit.
“Yeah, I’m not really that clean a person,” Olander said. “But he doesn’t mind because he’s like ‘whatever’ I guess. He doesn’t tell me he minds if he does.”
Beyond the bootstrap decorations, however, there are no posters, and the two don’t have much else other than clothes and the bare essentials.
This is the setting as Giffey sits on his bed, wearing a blue sweater and a pair of grey sweatpants, leaning back against the wall as he tries to explain what it’s like to be a member of the UConn men’s basketball team.
“You can have a pretty nice time because you just enjoy playing at a high level,” Giffey said. “That and school is pretty much your life, you don’t have too much free time. We just got the regular life like everyone I guess.”
That notion may seem a bit odd to the common UConn student, but both Giffey and Olander said that they don’t feel like they are any different than other students.
“It’s like whatever, at the end of the day I’m just a student just like everybody else,” Olander said. “I think in terms of everything, being a UConn basketball player on campus, people tend to look at you a little differently, but in terms of people from my hometown, people I grew up with, there’s no change, it’s the same.”
Giffey said that the prospect of people knowing him and randomly talking to him was strange at first, given the culture of his high school in Germany.
“It was weird. Especially when you go out now, people are just like randomly talking to you, it’s kind of strange, definitely,” Giffey said. “Especially because I wasn’t used to it, I had that atmosphere in my high school, people knew me but they knew me for being a basketball player, but no one ever went to my games or anything like that.”
Giffey explained that in Germany, nobody even knew he played basketball until he was in the 11th grade, when he was playing with the youth national team.
“I had to explain to my teachers that ‘I really need to go to the national team to get better’ and they just didn’t understand,” Giffey said. “They were like ‘Ok, well are you going to do your schoolwork or what?’
According to Giffey, the professors at UConn have been much more accommodating.
Different paths
To say that Giffey and Olander took different paths on their way to Storrs would be a huge understatement. Giffey is from Europe and he played for the German club team Alba Berlin, along with the U-20 national team, before being recruited by assistant coach Andre LaFleur during a recruiting trip through the country.
“He saw me at an away game in north Germany,” Giffey said. “They’d already been recruiting me, like, checking me out, so they came to Germany to see one of my games.”
Olander, on the other hand, grew up in nearby Mansfield, Conn., and played his high school ball at nearby E.O. Smith High School. Unlike most prospects, Olander had the UConn basketball program right in his backyard, and as a result, he got to know the program better a lot earlier than most get to.
“When I was, I think, a sophomore or a freshman, [UConn players] were inviting my brother to come up and play pick-up and I would just come along and play too,” Olander said. “And from there I guess, probably when I was a sophomore, I would just come up and play pick-up, I did that every summer.”
Olander’s brother Ryan would go on to play basketball at Fairfield, where he is currently the team’s starting center as a junior, but Tyler stuck around. He got to know many of the team’s older players, including the recently graduated Gavin Edwards, and over time, the program began to take a closer look at him.
“They started coming to me my junior year,” Olander said. “Coach [Patrick] Sellers started coming to some of my games, and then they offered me that summer going into my senior year.”
Olander committed to UConn after the end of his senior season. He said his reasons were because he felt it would be the best fit for him, and he liked the fact that it was close enough that his parents could come to all of his college games, as they had during high school.
For Giffey, the program’s history and track record were a lot more important than it’s proximity to home.
“We had a big freshman class, which gave me at least a chance to develop myself and to have a chance to compete right away,” Giffey said. “I feel like that’s one of the main reasons, and – oh, a hall of fame coach right here, that was one of the major reasons too. You’ve got a good history of winning and a bunch of players who went to the NBA, those are the main reasons.”
Playing at the next level
Giffey’s breakout performance against Kentucky in the Maui Invitational championship game turned a lot of heads. After scoring 14 points and helping complete UConn’s stunning arrival back onto the national stage, Giffey suddenly found himself right in the middle of the national spotlight, and the feedback started pouring in.
“It was exciting to see UConn do so well and have Niels play such a big role,” said Henrik Rödl, who coached Giffey while he was playing for the U-19 Alba Berlin team in Germany. “I felt happy for him and proud to be his coach for the last three years.”
Rödl, now the coach of TBB Trier in the German Basketball Bundesliga, also played in the Maui Invitational back in 1989 when he was a freshman at North Carolina. He and Giffey keep in touch, and he said he expects Giffey to keep improving over time.
“Niels is a very smart and reflective person, mature beyond his actual age,” Rödl said. “I think he’s doing incredibly well considering the cultural and basketball challenges he faces.”
Though the Maui Invitational final was a high point for Giffey and the rest of the team, the rest of the season hasn’t been sunshine and butterflies.
Giffey’s outburst last Thursday against Marquette helped get UConn back into the game, but ultimately it wasn’t enough to stop the Huskies from losing in overtime. Over the course of the year, they have seen limited minutes, and are averaging 2.7 and 1.3 points per game respectively.
“In the beginning of the season I was feeling really good, and I was feeling really confident about myself and my game,” Giffey said. “But right now I’m seeing less and less minutes, and I guess it’s part of the freshman experience, everyone struggles sometimes.”
Olander has had a very particular form of adversity that he’s been struggling to overcome. He has started a lot of games, but in many cases he will be pulled after the first mistake, and often doesn’t see the court again for the rest of the game. Olander called this both a source of frustration and motivation for him.
“It’s a little bit of both, because, I mean, [coach Calhoun] will pull me out for any mistake that I make, when I get in there I try to be perfect and not make any mistakes,” Olander said. “Your every move and every mistake will be noticed and put under a magnifying glass and blown up, so you’ve got to make sure that everything your doing is what you’re supposed to be doing.”
Despite the struggles, each have seen flashes of success to point towards early in their career. For Giffey it was the Maui Invitational championship, for Olander, that game came a few weeks later when UConn blew out Harvard. Olander was a perfect 3-for-3 from the field, scoring seven points while grabbing seven boards in that game.
If nothing else, the performances should serve as inspiration to look towards when things aren’t going well.
Either way, both players acknowledged that they knew playing at UConn wouldn’t be a nice, smooth ride.
“I knew it wouldn’t be easy to play here,” Giffey said. “I knew that I would be facing more athletic people…I feel like it’s a good step to go if you’re a European.”
Drawn together
The UConn student body first met Giffey and Olander on the night of Oct. 15, 2010. While coach Calhoun was arguing his case before the NCAA committee on infractions, the rest of the team was back in Storrs for the First Night pep rally.
Obscured by a silhouette, Olander approached the court and emerged from behind the curtain into the spotlight as his name was announced to the thousands of cheering fans in attendance.
And with all eyes on him for the first time, he busted out a move that vaguely resembled dancing while sporting this big, goofy grin on his face.
Following right behind him was Giffey, who took his turn in the spotlight and followed his friend and roommate with a simple, effective and appropriate move of his own – the shopping cart.
It was a light-hearted, goofy moment, the perfect first impression to deliver the fans. Yet in many ways, it was also the culmination of a journey that brought these two basketball players together, and the start of a new one that will take them, along with their five fellow classmates, through a college career that has only just begun to unfold.
Olander and Giffey grew up 3,853 miles apart, and each took a much different road to get to UConn. Giffey played for club teams and national teams before arriving after a long plane ride across a continent and an ocean. Olander played at the high school next door and then just walked down the street. But both wound up in the same place together under the same roof in a small, nondescript (and somewhat messy) dorm room to play basketball for a hall of fame coach at one of college basketball’s most storied programs.
Only time will tell how their legacy in Storrs will ultimately be defined, but as they work towards their future, if nothing else, they will have each other to lean on throughout it all.
“Definitely,” Olander said. “I love having Niels as a roommate.”
Mac Cerullo 