Arizona Basketball: Rawle Alkins and Justin Simon team up in Germany

More former Arizona Basketball players are on the move in Europe, but this time it is for the better as former Wildcat Rawle Alkins is signing with a new team. 

It has only been two games in the EasyCredit Bundesliga Basketball League, and former Arizona Basketball star Rawle Alkins has been playing for the JobStairs – Giessen 46ers. However, MHP Riesen Ludwigsburg (a team in the same league) is buying out his contract and they will sign him for the rest of the season.

Ludwigsburg is about two and a half hours south of Giessen in the lush countryside of Germany.

It’s always nice hearing good news about players who consistently work hard to live out their dreams. Sometimes one’s career path takes a twist and success depends on how folks react and recover from bumps in the road. Alkins and others in his position who played at Arizona and didn’t stay on an NBA Contract have done just that.

MHP’s head coach is a former Stanford player, John Patrick. Patrick took the struggling team over in 2013, and then led MHP in the BBL 2020-21 season with  a 30-4 record and went into the playoffs as the top seed. These accolades earned him Bundesliga Coach of the Year honors for the third time. So Alkins will now play for an experienced and successful coach in the BBL.

In the first two games of the season, Alkins averaged 15 Points, and in game one for Giessen, he scored 13 points, and in game two, he scored 17 points while averaging three rebounds, 1.5 assists, 1.0 steals, and a block (he had two in game two). Here are some highlights.

The move for Rawle Alkins provides a couple of bonuses here for the former Arizona Basketball star.

• For one, he got a raise.
• And two, Rawle will now be able to play in the Champions League in Germany.

There are 18 teams in the German BBL, only one of them also competes in the FIBA Champions League, and that team is MHP.  This will allow Rawle and former Wildcat Justin Simon to play against and compete within the BBL in Germany as well as globally. Just today, MHP played Italian League team Banco di Sardegna Sassari in the Champions League.

The official name of this international league is the Basketball Champions League (BCL) which specifically holds annual professional basketball games for European Clubs, which is managed by FIBA Europe. The champion of this league then participates in the FIBA Intercontinental Cup.

There is another bonus to this move. Rawle is playing alongside former Arizona guard Justin Simon who transferred the year before Alkins joined the team in Tucson (2016). Germany seems to be becoming Wildcat Country as Parker Jackson-Cartwright also plays in the same league.

PJC and his former teammate Simon faced off just last week, and Justin told us he is really enjoying playing in Germany, and that was before he knew Rawle was going to join his team.

Simon of course played for Sean Miller at Arizona in his freshman year (2015-16) but didn’t get the playing time he wanted. He then decided to transfer and landed at St. John’s, seeing a much bigger role. Overall, it was a good move for him, and we look forward to seeing what our Wildcats do in Germany this season!