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PF/C Kosta Koufos (CSKA Moscow)

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12/29/05


Sports spotlight: Being tall no big deal for Koufos
Thursday, December 29, 2005 <TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>[FONT=Verdana, Times New Roman, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]SPORTS SPOTLIGHT TODD PORTER[/FONT]


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Repository julie vennitti​

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PLAIN TWP. - There isn’t a tall joke Kosta Koufos hasn’t heard. The best, the one that always tickles the GlenOak High School junior’s funny bone, comes from a man at church.

Same line. Same laugh.

“Every week, he sees me and says: ‘What fertilizer do you use?’ I always laugh at that one,” Koufos said.

Funny.

Try being 7-foot-1 with size 18 shoes. It isn’t like Koufos can walk into The Finish Line with his buddies and squeeze into the latest LeBron Nikes.

Try driving your grandmother’s Ford Contour with your knees up against the dashboard and the seat nearly resting on the backseat. Koufos doesn’t sit on a bus; he lays on it. When he flies, he is one of the first ones on the plane to grab exit-row seating.

Desks?

“Our chairs at school aren’t connected to desks,” he said, “so I sit in the chair sideways.”

Kathy Koufos has criss-crossed the country watching her son play summer basketball. For mom, the trips are part recreation, part entertainment, part school shopping.

Buying clothes for her son wasn’t a problem until this year. And get this: Doctors think Kosta could grow another 2 or 3 inches.

“Right now,” Kathy Koufos said, “he’s in a 36-36 jean. In every city we go to, I try to hit the Nike outlet store. Big and tall places just assume a tall guy is a big guy, and a lot of the waists don’t fit him there. ... Sometimes, I buy unhemmed pants and bring them home and hem them.”

That usually works, though sometimes the unhemmed pants are still too short.

“We’re hoping he doesn’t get too much taller,” mom said.

You won’t find Kosta styling around the GlenOak halls in designer jeans. Tommy Hilfiger stopped cutting the jean — at least ones in the department store — for kids about 6-6.

“The more trendy styles kids his age like, the big and tall places, don’t carry those,” Kathy said. “But Kosta is a good sport. He’s not too demanding.”
Kosta has no one to blame but himself and a higher power for this height problem, if you can call it a problem.

“Hey,” Kosta said, “I’m not complaining. I like being tall.”

Beats the alternative. Try being a 5-10 sports writer. We all have our crosses to bear. Some of us aren’t taller than the cross.

As a kid — heck, he’s still only 16 — Koufos used to pray to be tall.

“Please, God,” he’d say, “let me be 7 feet one day.”

Hey, big fella, The Big Fella was listening.

Genetics won’t explain Koufos’ 7-foot genes, and they sure don’t help pay for his 7-foot jeans.

Koufos’ mom is 5-8. His late father was 6-foot.

“He was a relatively normal-size baby,” Kathy said. “He was 22 inches.”
Twenty-two inches is about the size of his feet now.

“But he was 11 pounds,” Kathy said. “He wasn’t a fat baby, just always a solid baby.”

Since kindergarten, Koufos has always been the tallest kid in class.
This is the worst part of being tall: Elementary school teachers expected him to be more mature than other kids. Somewhere, it got lost that just because he was taller than most of the other children’s fathers, he isn’t working 9-to-5.

“Being taller, the expectations around him was for his behavioral needs to be that of an older child,” Kathy said. “I was repeating myself a lot that his behavior was age-appropriate. He never acted out. He just acted like the rest of the kids.”

This year, Koufos got his driver’s license. He and mom are shopping for a used SUV.

“The older ones seems to have more room,” she said.

The kid, mom figures, has earned it. He’s gracious and helps around the house.

“We have nine-foot ceilings,” she said. “He’s helpful up there.”

Meanwhile, Koufos is playing his second full season of high school varsity basketball, enjoying the attention he gets from major college coaches — all while being a normal high school kid.

Speaking of which, is there a dating advantage to being 7-1?

“I haven’t had any problems,” Koufos said, laughing.

His girlfriend is Chelsey Landis, a GlenOak classmate. She’s 5-5.

Now that’s a prom picture. Reach Repository sports writer Todd Porter at (330) 580-8340 or e-mail:

[email protected]

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I spied Kosta Koufos sitting behind our bench during the game tonight (vs LSU). Unsure as to whether it was an official or unofficial visit. He looked to be enjoying himself, shaking hands with a few people, but I ACTUALLY caught him yawning with 5.5 seconds left in the game! Maybe he was just that confident that we were going to win...
 
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BuckTwenty,
Not to give you a hard time but that was not Kosta Koufos sitting behind the OSU bench Saturday. It was actually BJ Mullens. I sat about 3 rows behind him and who I'm assuming was his girlfriend. The entire Diebler family was also there and Jon and BJ sat next to each other. There was another recruit that sat across the aisle from them. I think it was either Dante Jackson or Lighty. Jon Diebler was really into the game. He spent almost all of halftime talking to who I think was Jackson/Lighty and other fans/invited guests behind the bench. Mullens and Diebler also spent some time before the game talking to the assistant coaches, particularily Chris Jent. Regardless it was good to see these recruits building bonds before they even step on campus.
 
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1/16/06

Prospect gets to shoot around on Buckeyes’ court

Monday, January 16, 2006

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Kosta Koufos loves basketball so much he has to get a workout in every day. Since he wasn’t going to get back home to Canton until late last night, Ohio State was only too happy to oblige him yesterday.

Koufos, a 7-foot-1, 240-pound junior from Canton GlenOak who is being pursued by many major programs, was shooting jump shots on the Value City Arena court more than an hour after watching the Buckeyes lose to Michigan State.

Koufos was one of nearly a dozen blue-chip prospects who sat behind the OSU bench during the game, including 2006 signees Greg Oden, Mike Conley, Daequan Cook and David Lighty.

Cook, from Dayton Dunbar, and Lighty, from Cleveland Villa Angela-St. Joseph, will play today against each other in the Martin Luther King Day Challenge at 4:30 p.m. Seven-foot Harvest Prep sophomore B.J. Mullens, a 2008 commitment, plays at 6:15 p.m. against Licking Heights.

Koufos was at Ohio State less than 24 hours after coach Thad Matta and assistant Dan Peters flew to Canton on Saturday night to watch him play. Matta used the same tactic last March when he attended one of Oden’s and Conley’s games in Indianapolis the night before the Buckeyes upset No. 1-ranked Illinois.

"It was real nice of him to take time and come all the way up to Canton, Ohio. It shows he really cares," Koufos said.

Koufos said he is keeping an open mind on schools but has said the idea of joining other Ohio players at Ohio State and playing for Matta appeals to him.

"Coach Matta’s getting Ohio State on the map," he said.


_ Bob Baptist

[email protected]
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Upvote 0
Some bad news to report on Koufas...I am hearing that he broke his foot in practice this week and will be out for the season.

Let's hope he can have a quick recovery from this and be ready for his senior season at GlenOak!
 
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HilmerJ said:
i love this Ohio State recruiting momentum, but it seems like there is a little barrier...first 2 acl tears, and now a broken foot........well, injuries do heal, and Kosta will be back.
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Well a broken foot is an easy heal. He will have hit rehabbed and ready to go by the summer, for AAU.

Heck Carp was back running on his in like 5 weeks.

Give Kosta 4 months and he will ready to go.

As for the knee injuries, they take about 2 years to fully recover from.
 
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Koufos in fact has broken his foot and will be out for an extended period of time........His comments are impressive........:(

Kosta Koufos, a 7-foot-1 junior center who is averaging 24.6 points and 13.5 rebounds (29 points and 15 rebounds in his past three games), was sitting on the bench with a broken foot. He injured it in practice Thursday and is expected to be out from four to six weeks.

``This is the most wonderful team I've been around,'' said Koufos, who already has scholarship offers from Ohio State and Louisville. Schools such as Maryland, North Carolina, Connecticut are also on the top of his recruiting list. In fact, assistant coaches from North Carolina and UConn attended the game, not knowing that Koufos was injured.

``These guys dedicated the game to me, and they are my heroes.''
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