Ex-Hawkeye Kurt Looby is an NBA prospect - for real

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I wouldn't have believed this a year ago. Would you?

It gives me pleasure to write Kurt Looby, who averaged 3.6 points and 4.6 rebounds as a senior for the Iowa Hawkeyes last year, could play his way into the NBA this year. Or, he could at least get close.

Looby's rookie season in pro basketball recently ended with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers of Hidalgo, Texas, in the NBA Development League. His 2008-2009 numbers:

6.4 points per game, 8.1 rebounds, 2.5 blocks. The blocks total led the league for everyone who played more than 10 games.

Looby's numbers are more imposing when you look at the second half of the season, after he became a starter when the Vipers' previous starting center left to play in China.

 On April 5 against, ironically, the Iowa Energy, the 6-foot-10 Looby had a triple-double with 14 points, 22 rebounds and 11 blocks.

"He was unbelievable that game," said Clay Moser, Looby's Rio Grande Valley coach.

"He's an unbelievable kid.  Very eager to learn and a great teammate."

The easy thing to do here is hammer Iowa Coach Todd Lickliter for not getting more out of Looby in his senior season. I think it would be unfair. Looby has only played organized basketball for six years, and the first one was in his Antigua homeland.

He was, and still is, raw.

"He was so rail-thin in college," Moser said. "He got with a trainer and a nutritionist, and gained 30 pounds last summer. It helped him, particularly with lower-body strength.

"He brings unbelievable athleticism. He's very, very long. He has great timing a real ability to block shots. He just loves blocking shots. That's the thing that gets him going.

"His energy and motor are really unbelievable."

"Unbelievable," obviously, is a word Moser uses often about his center. But when he tells you at least nine NBA teams have offered him invitations to play for their summer-league squads, "unbelievable" fits.

"When he got here he was just as raw as you could possibly imagine," Moser said. "In November he had to catch up to the speed of our game a little bit. It's much faster than even the highest level of college.

"Kurt had trouble catching the ball, had trouble staying out of foul trouble. Rebounds were kind of flying over his head. But as the days wore on, he adjusted to how fast the game is at this level."

I've said this before here, but I'm happy for Looby. He seemed like a genuinely good guy at Iowa, someone who dearly wanted to do so well and got frustrated with himself when he didn't.

Here's an example of what makes a winner: Early in the year Looby was averaging 45 percent or so as a free-throw shooter. He made 72 percent of them in the last two months of the season.

Now, going to an NBA summer-league as a free agent still means you're a long way from an NBA roster. But, it's an essential step.

""X, Y and Z, Kurt got better in every single category during the year," Moser said. "He played his way onto the NBA's radar screen.

"I think he's a whole another D-League season away. Another 25 or 30 pounds of muscle and mass would help him, particularly with lower-body strength."

Picking the right NBA team to go to summer-league ball with is important, Moser said.

"You want to go where you have a chance of making the team, or at least getting an invitation to veterans' camp this fall.

"I hope we get him back for another year, but I realize that may not be part of the deal."