Inside The Huskies

Huskies' German Import Hannes Steinbach Has 18-Rebound Outing

The incoming 6-foot-10 freshman brings plenty of solid physical play to his game.
Dan Raley|
Husky signee Hannes Steinbach made it to the German BBL semifinals.
Husky signee Hannes Steinbach made it to the German BBL semifinals. | Draftstack

Hannes Steinbach will be arriving at the University of Washington soon enough, unpacking a reputation that continues to grow for him with each playoff outing in Germany's highest tier of pro basketball.

On Sunday, the 6-foot-10 Huskies signee came up with a career-best 18 rebounds for Wurzburg in the semifinals of the Basketball Bundesliga League (BBL), though it wasn't enough to prevent a 91-87 overtime loss to Ulm in the opener of the five-game series.

Just 19 years old, Steinbach has drawn raves for his all-around play that has Danny Sprinkle's staff eager to get him to Montlake and find a leading role for him.

"He has some NBA teams looking at him," Sprinkle said recently. "He's probably one of the top two or three prospects in all of Europe."

Certainly he's been consistently good in a number of BBL games that have his Wurzburg team trying to make it to the championship finals.

In the quarterfinals against Braunschweig, Steinbach helped close out a 97-88 series-clinching victory with 20 points and 10 rebounds in game 5.

In his four previous games in that series, he had 17 points and 8 rebounds, 11 points and a career-best 14 boards that led to him being named player of the game, 17 points and 11 rebounds, and 14 points and 6 boards.

While physical enough, Steinbach no doubt will work on his offensive game that's still evolving once he's in Seattle.

Against Ulm, he connected on 3 of 9 shots, all from regulation range, and just 1 of 4 foul shots, as his teammates probably didn't go to him enough.

Either way, Steinbach will show up in Seattle as battled-tested as any of Sprinkle's players following his time spent in Germany's top level of basketball.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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