Maryland Basketball: Meeting the New Terps...Haukur Palsson

(With Maryland basketball gearing up—and the football team in the doldrums—it's time to meet Gary Williams' newest players. Haukur Palsson is first up. Look for more player intros in the coming days and weeks. For plenty more unfiltered news and analysis on all things Terps, visit us at www.shell-games.com, or follow us on Twitter @terpsblog.)

Picture this: you live in Iceland. You have a bunch of growth spurts. Somehow, you acquire some basketball skills.

You begin to consider your future. You scratch your chin ponderously.

After literally minutes of agonizing, you decide to get out of there. You head for the sunny shores of Florida, where you ball for one of those elite basketball prep academies masquerading as a high school. You visit College Park, Md., on the night they beat Duke in a thriller. You sign with the Terps.

That, in a partially cracked nutshell, is the inspirational story of Maryland freshman Haukur Palsson (pronounced HYOO-kurr PAUL-son).  Bob Costas? Pulitzer committee? My phone lines are open.

Hauker Palsson is probably the least-heralded of Maryland basketball's incoming class. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s the least good. A project, yes. But if memory serves, Gary Williams has had success with projects before.

Plus, it is my understanding that he is one “cool customer.”Know what I’m saying? He has “ice water in his veins.” He “comes from a really cold-weather country,” if you get my meaning.

And his nickname is Hawk. Probably because he likes to eat mice. It is the Icelandic way. Oh, you didn’t know that? Sure. HUGE rodent eaters.

Last year was Palsson’s first living in the U.S., and the 6-foot-6, 215-pound small forward seemed to adjust pretty well. He averaged 10 points and five boards for Monteverde Academy while shooting a very respectable 39 percent from three.

He got time at every position but center, which is always a plus, especially with Gary. According to scouting guru Dave Telep, Palsson “seemed to me to be an intelligent player…He shot the ball with some confidence and had good rotation on it. I thought he was a confident guy with some skill to him as far as the perimeter play.”

OK, so he’s a lanky, slow-footed, sharp-shooting European. Not exactly a stop-the-presses revelation.  

But wait...there’s more. 

A lot of commentators say he’s more than just a towheaded, pixielike shooter who presumably eats mice and listens to Bjork all the time. In the various scouting reports, you see a lot of the phrases you might expect—“hard worker,” “high basketball IQ”—but you also see “defends well,” “a body that can withstand pounding” and “great at rebounding.”

He seems to particularly excel as a team defender, which could mean good things for his ability to help apply the press. A lot of these commentators are his coaches or themselves European, and as such may be grading on a curve, but it’s still good to see those things.

Bottom line: Hauker Palsson probably couldn’t put up a gaudy stat line playing against a vegetable garden retaining wall. But he’s got some talent, he’s a good teammate, he seems very thoughtful (he was also offered a scholarship by Harvard), and perhaps most importantly, he seems coachable.

Will he ever be a serious contributor? I don’t know. Neither do you. But as far as benchwarmers go, you could probably do a lot worse than The Hawk. And if nothing else, he’ll fill the international cult hero void that Jin Soo Choi’s departure created in my psyche.