Bahcesehir Koleji Istanbul big man Deniz Kilicli introduces us to his history at Bahcesehir as a high-school student and athlete in the first edition of his Eurocupbasketball.com.
Deniz Kilicli: 'Bahcesehir is up and coming'
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5 mins read
Bahcesehir Koleji Istanbul big man Deniz Kilicli is not yet 30 years of old, but he has already seen plenty in his basketball career on both sides of the Atlantic. This season is a special one for him as he makes his 7DAYS EuroCup debut with a special club and organization. Not only did his mother study at Bahcesehir, but Kilicli attended its high scool and played for its team too before heading to the United States. He will use this Eurocupbasketball.com blog to take us behind the scenes at Bahcesehir in its premier EuroCup campaign.
First of all, I have to say it feels great to be playing at this level, in the EuroCup. I was 23-24 years old when I last played the EuroLeague and I was on a very high-level team, which was Efes. It was different then. I had just graduated from college and I didn't have any kind of understanding of what was going on. I didn't know any of the coaches and I didn't know what they wanted from me. So it was a very big shock coming from college to become a member of a professional organization like Efes and to be able to adapt and play with many other great players. In my eyes, some of the guys that I played with were some of the best players that ever played the game in Europe. It was hard for me to adapt and understand what was going on, so it took me several seasons and a very, very terrible injury to before I saw what was going on, what people want from me and how I could help my team.
It is still a learning experience, but I am very curious to see what is going to happen this season with Bahcesehir because we have a great team: great characters and a good organization that is willing to give everything they have for the players on and off the court.
"I am very curious to see what is going to happen this year..."
I would like to introduce you to Bahcesehir, which is more than a regular basketball club. It is a private school located on the European side of Istanbul and known for its great educational values. I went to Bahcesehir for high school; I was a scholarshiplarship student there and played for its basketball team. We played at the high school world championships and stuff like that; these private schools have good teams. We had players from good teams such as Ulker before it merged with Fenerbahce. We also had some players from Efes.
Bahcesehir has been teaching since the late 1960s. It started as private classes to help prepare high school and university students for their exams. My mother studied there, also. Bahcesehir is very big in Turkey; it is the pinnacle of academics. If you want your kids to attend a nice school and get a great education, you pick Bahcesehir. Since then they have grown a lot. It has campuses all over the world: China, USA, England, Germany and several other countries. And it keeps growing, finding the best teachers so they can push its academic success further.
When I was there, I had a scholarship. Most of the time, especially in Europe - in the US it's different - as a young player, it is hard to go to school and then practice with the senior team. At some point, you have to miss some lessons at school. At Bahcesehir, the first thing they said was that school comes first. We had to worry about our grades, just like in the US. The classes I took taught us about what we should do as people: you should have an A-plan, a B-plan, even a C-plan. When I went to high school, they taught us to build ourselves and that helped me go to the United States in the end. Because I went to Bahcesehir and got good grades and was pushed academically, when I went to the US, I was already ahead of all of the students there because of this education.
Bahcesehir has a very important place in my life because as a basketball player, I also put academics first and athletics second because as I mentioned, I had a terrible injury. There are always things that can go wrong and in sports, it is a miracle that we make it as far as we do because we are always at risk of getting hurt. Some of the players who I played with when I was little can't find a job, especially in this COVID-19 economy. So they cannot find jobs and had to quit, so what you fall back on is your education, your diploma and how can carry yourself. Bahcesehir started this in me, that I should push for the academics first and then be a basketball player, which helped me - and still helps me - in my life.