Sometimes at practice, coach Chris Victor catches snippets of conversations and starts to wonder — and occasionally, worry — if his team might be conspiring against him.
He doesn’t know for sure because his players are speaking a foreign language, and usually more than one: Whispers of Korean, Japanese and Chinese are all common when the Seattle University Redhawks get together.
Theoretically, his American-born players — there are 11 on the roster — know only English. But the three Asian-born athletes playing for his college basketball team this season have taught their teammates a handful of words and phrases in their native languages, and Victor is reasonably sure he wouldn’t approve if he were the subject matter.
“Before these guys, we also had a couple European kids, and they’d be speaking Serbian to each other,” Victor said, shaking his head and laughing. “I’ve told them this year, ‘Hey, when we’re all together, it has to be English. I gotta know what’s going on.’”
The number of international players continues to grow in college basketball, making the sport, much like the NBA, increasingly global. And yet, for as big as basketball is in Asia — with an NBA focus on China and Yao Ming the No. 1 draft pick in 2002 — college coaches rarely recruit the continent. That’s due, coaches and players say, to a combination of language barriers, cultural differences and a closing, but still obvious, talent gap. Victor and others think that’s changing, though.
The Redhawks are an interesting test case this season with Junseok Yeo, a senior forward from Seoul who transferred from Gonzaga; Houran Dan, a sophomore from Neimenggu, China; and Yuto Kawashima, a redshirt freshman from Gunma, Japan. There are a handful of other players across men’s and women’s college basketball also from Asia, including Oregon guard Wei Lin, a sophomore from Xiamen, Fujian, China, and Baylor women’s guard Yuting Deng from Hunan Province, China.
Asian-born standouts have included Rui Hachimura of Toyama, Japan, who played at Gonzaga from 2016-19 and now plays for the Los Angeles Lakers, and Hyunjung Lee of Yongin City, South Korea, who starred at Davidson from 2019-22. (Jeremy Lin, perhaps the best-known basketball player of Asian descent, is a Taiwanese-American who was born in Los Angeles and starred at Harvard.)
Boyuan Zhang is a 6-foot-7 wing prospect in the 2026 class from China with offers from Illinois, USC, Minnesota and others. He came to the U.S. to play his senior year at Veritas Academy in California after making connections while playing for the World Team at the Nike Hoops Summit.
Victor said there’s “no question” Asia is an untapped market.
Last March, the NCAA reported that the number of international players in Division I men’s basketball had increased from 406 to 888 since the 2009-10 season, led by 505 players from Europe. Canada had 163 men’s players, followed by Australia (64), the United Kingdom (41), Nigeria (39) and France (36).
“As basketball gets more popular in China, Japan and Korea, you’re gonna see more youth get involved and, ultimately, you’re going to see more (college) programs go over there,” Victor said. “A big part of what Jun (Yeo) is trying to do is inspire and help develop that.”
Part of the issue, Victor said, is that right now Europe is “miles ahead” of Asian countries when it comes to basketball infrastructure.
He likened it to the influx of Australians in American basketball over the past two decades. As a handful of players came overseas and found success, Australia started building a pipeline that allowed young, top talent to get better coaching, aided by the NBA Global Academy in Australia. That led to more players heading to the States. According to Basketball Australia, there are 187 Australians (68 men, 119 women) in college basketball this season. That’s more than double the number in 2013-14, when there were 93 total Australians in college hoops.
For decades, China has been considered the NBA’s most important market outside the U.S. Its population of 1.4 billion provides an opportunity for the league to grow revenue. Last fall, the NBA returned to China to play a preseason game after a six-year absence.
Bringing players from Asia is almost a guaranteed boost in attendance and social media following. When Hachimura was at Gonzaga, multiple reporters moved from Japan to Spokane to chronicle him. At Oregon, local reporters have seen a spike in social media followers from China. Three Asian-based media outlets have flown reporters to Seattle U this season — a significant uptick in coverage for the middling West Coast Conference program.
“I was a little naïve going into it about just how popular Jun is back home in Korea,” Victor said. “Every time we go on the road, there’s 20 to 30 Korean fans there waiting to meet Jun, get his autograph, take a picture with him. … He’s mobbed after every game.”
Junseok Yeo plays for Seattle University and is popular among his fellow Koreans. (Courtesy of Seattle University)
That doesn’t mean it’s been easy by any stretch for Yeo or his Asian teammates.
Many European children grow up learning English, easing the transition to America for European players. The “Balkan Five,” for example, arrived at Illinois speaking reasonably fluent English.
Japanese-born Keisei Tominaga played at Nebraska from 2021-24, but only after spending two years at a junior college learning English. Hachimura redshirted his first year at Gonzaga and often missed practice because he was doing intensive work with his English tutor. English isn’t just for on-court activities, either; staying academically eligible can be staggeringly tough.
Brian Michaelson, now in his 13th year as an assistant at Gonzaga, coached both Hachimura and Yeo. He pointed out that not only does America have its own basketball terminology, which is an adjustment for any player, but each program has its own dialect according to its system.
Yeo, who got introduced to high-level basketball when he played at the NBA Global Academy in Australia, laughed when asked if he understood what Gonzaga coaches said to him at practice his first year in Spokane.
“Oh no,” he said. “And every practice, I got really tired easily, because I was using my brain so much. The first year, I stayed in my room a lot because it was hard to have a conversation.”
His first year in the States, Yeo forced himself to consume everything — TV, music, YouTube shows — in English to immerse himself in the language.
If top Asian players go to the Australian NBA Academy, as Yeo and Kawashima did, it can help jump-start learning English. College coaches and pro scouts sometimes find players at the global academies, but also see them in international FIBA tournaments.
Some players have no choice but to learn on an accelerated timeline. In Eugene, Lin was thrown into the starting lineup mid-January after the Ducks lost starting guard Jackson Shelstad for the season to an injury. He’s played well offensively but has struggled on defense and with turnovers and has come off the bench the past four games.
Lin’s native language is Mandarin, so he spoke to The Athletic through his agent, Alex Yam. Lin said he wanted to come to Oregon and college basketball in general because he viewed it as the best path to the NBA. One of the biggest off-court adjustments has been all the free time he has now. In the Chinese Basketball Association, where he previously played, athletes’ days were much more structured. As such, he’s getting a crash course in English and discipline. On the court, the increase in speed and physicality has been eye-opening, he said.
Wei Lin viewed playing in college hoops for the Oregon Ducks as his best path to the NBA. (Geoff Stellfox / Getty Images)
For Yeo, who played two seasons at Gonzaga, transferring became the best option to showcase his skills. He’s been a key piece of the Korean senior national team and needed more reps to continue to improve. He left Spokane for Seattle last spring.
Seattle U appealed to Yeo because he knew he’d play. He’s averaging 12.2 points in 30 minutes per game after playing in only 14 games at Gonzaga last season.
“Those two years of experience (in Spokane) kind of help me now, and then, especially with (Kawashima and Dan), there’s a lot of connection,” Yeo said. “They gave me a comfortable environment.”
In Seattle, it’s easy for Yeo and his teammates to find authentic food from their home. In early February, the team went to a hot pot restaurant to let Dan, Kawashima and Yeo “run the show,” Victor said.
In Eugene, Lin cooks a lot in his apartment. He misses food from home, he said, but he’s found a new American obsession he can’t imagine living without: Chipotle.
Yeo’s transition to the States was aided by Marshall Cho, a former high school and college coach based in Portland, Ore., who immigrated from South Korea when he was 9 years old. Cho has the unique distinction of understanding both the NCAA landscape — particularly how to get academically eligible — and the cultural adjustment. He said transitioning to college basketball is a layered challenge.
“In Asia, we come from a collective culture. We understand that we are part of something bigger than ourselves,” Cho said. “These players, they have the burden of carrying that load, where they’re each kind of carrying their country on their shoulders. And they know basketball is a team game.
“But at the same time, in America, to survive, you have to stand out. Especially in today’s NCAA, if you don’t do your job for a year, there’s a guy being transferred in to take your spot. So there has to be a shift in their mindset on the court, and it’s a learning curve.”
Still, Cho is hopeful that in planting small seeds like Yeo, it jump-starts something so that “when the next great Korean player emerges in the next two to three years, they know there’s a support system here in the U.S., there’s a fan base and you will find success.”
Victor knows the transition is challenging in a way he’ll never fully understand. He got assurance from Seattle U administrators before bringing over multiple international players that the school would have support systems in place. (He’s particularly proud of Dan’s 4.0 GPA last fall.)
He views creating a culture where foreign players can thrive, especially from countries not as experienced in college hoops, as a major victory.
“That’s one of my goals, to come to America and inspire them (kids back home) to try it,” Yeo said.
“I want to open the path for them. That’s really important to me.”