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Following a four-year profession at Dayton, the place he led the nation in three-point share final season, Washington Heights native Koby Brea is heading south to the college of his desires, the College of Kentucky.
It began at these courts on Nagle Ave. Within the coronary heart of Washington Heights, a neighborhood north of Harlem, tucked behind the hallowed fundamental court docket of Dyckman Park, lies a smaller half-court lined with a singular black fence. It’s there {that a} younger Koby Brea fostered his love for the sport. Just some blocks away from his guardian’s condominium, Koby would go to the court docket and meet up together with his buddies and different native youngsters to draft their very own groups and hoop all through
the day.
When he was 6, he would lace up his kicks, seize his ball and head down the road together with his dad, Stephan, to fulfill up together with his pop’s buddies. They’d journey from park to park, hooping to their hearts’ content material. “They nonetheless play to today. I don’t understand how, however they do,” Koby says. And there was Koby, witnessing that love for the sport in actual time.
“Being round it, all you are able to do is basically watch and benefit from the journey,” he says. “Any time they ran down a technique, I’d be on the opposite half making an attempt to shoot, making an attempt to get my ball and be fast earlier than they got here again down.”
Just a few years later, he was waking up at 5 a.m. to work out at those self same courts. Everybody sleeping whereas he was working? That was one of the best motivation.
Dyckman set the usual for who Koby Brea wished to be. In 2024, that will be one of the best shooter in faculty basketball and the most recent addition for Mark Pope and the Kentucky Wildcats.
Fifteen years after first being launched to the concrete courts, Koby is again at Dyckman. It’s a piping scorching mid-August afternoon and the solar is unrelenting. Pay it no thoughts, Koby’s suited in a full Eric Emanuel child blue tracksuit with matching “Industrial Blue” Air Jordan 4s on-foot. After watching him study to play and finally compete in the summertime Dyckman tournaments, his father, mom and youngest brother Tyler now stand off to the aspect as we snap photographs. It’s a household affair. For the Breas and Washington Heights, that’s all the time been the case.
“Rising up in Washington Heights, it’s like having a very large household round you,” Brea explains. “You’re simply round an entire bunch of individuals which might be similar to you, that come from the identical tradition, the identical background. Now we have a whole lot of Dominicans, a whole lot of Latin individuals, and any time you’re strolling down the road, you see any individual that’s similar to you, that appears similar to you, talks similar to you. It simply appears like household.”
The infinite hours spent surrounded by his group, on and off the court docket, set the stage for his dedication to those that have poured into him. As he stands at heart court docket with Tyler dribbling round his legs, he sees his personal childhood mirrored again at him. It’s an eerily acquainted feeling, one he skilled just some weeks previous to our shoot when he first stepped foot contained in the Joe Craft Heart in Lexington. For years, Koby envisioned himself suiting up within the Massive Blue. Now it’s a actuality.
“You see all of the blood, sweat and tears that was put into that health club that I simply walked into,” he says of that go to.
When Koby wasn’t dicing it up at Dyckman, he was watching Karl-Anthony Cities, Devin Booker and the remainder of the mid-2010s Wildcats. He longed to get photographs up beneath the load of the eight banners that hung above. That stage of status was fascinating. So he aimed for it.
Koby remembers the primary time his coach at Monsignor Scanlan Excessive College introduced him to the campus within the Bronx. As they made small speak concerning the staff and the college, the coach requested Koby the place he wished to play on the subsequent stage.
“I keep in mind I used to be a child with large desires and I informed him, I need to go to the College of Kentucky,” Koby says. “And he checked out my dad and he was like, You’ve received a wild one. I don’t know if I can get you to Kentucky, however I’ll make certain I get you someplace. That simply goes to indicate that when you could have individuals round you which might be assured in you, need to push you essentially the most you possibly can, you even have that confidence in your self that that is what I need to be and that’s how I’m going to make it. It units it off for your self.”
Heading into the 2024-25 season, Koby Brea’s not solely suiting up for Kentucky, he’s anticipated to assist this system seize nationwide prominence as soon as once more.
However the Washington Heights native didn’t simply get to the blue blood of his desires. He grinded his manner towards the chance. Popping out of Scanlan as a second staff All-New York choice, Koby set his sights on a profession as a Dayton Flyer. He took house A-10 Sixth Man of the Yr in his redshirt freshman season, however suffered a pair of stress fractures in every of his legs the next yr that prevented him from taking that subsequent leap he was prepared for.
As an alternative, he spent the summer time getting type taking pictures in whereas sitting in his wheelchair. It took everything of the offseason and a portion of the preseason to totally get well. With simply two weeks of practices and conditioning beneath his belt, Koby proceeded to mild almost each web within the nation on hearth, main the Flyers into the second spherical of March Insanity.
On 201 makes an attempt, Koby led the nation in three-point share, nailing 49.8 % of his photographs from past the arc. Sorry, undecided should you caught that. Koby Brea hit rattling close to half of his photographs from downtown. Throw in 11.1 factors and almost 4 boards a sport and the accolades began to stream. A second A-10 Sixth Man of the Yr honor was appropriately bestowed and similar to that, Koby was immediately on the radar of each main powerhouse within the nation. On the finish of the day, Kentucky all the time had the higher hand.
“This yr I simply actually wished to take the chance to take a step again so I might take a pair steps ahead. I got here again to varsity with the expectation that every one I used to be going to do that summer time was work,” Brea says. “Work as laborious as I might, work the toughest that I ever had, simply to make sure that I had an awesome yr at an awesome new place.”
The wait, the work, it was all price it. He made his stamp at Dyckman. He discovered himself at Dayton and inscribed himself into the school basketball document books. Now he’s placing up photographs in the identical health club Booker did almost a decade in the past, as visions of the 2025 NBA Draft develop nearer and nearer to actuality. However within the right here and now, Koby Brea is letting these years price of classes information him as he takes it day-to-day. He’s stronger, more healthy and extra deadly than ever with the ball in his arms. And as he turns the chapter to his collegiate epilogue, there’s a looming purpose that Koby’s longed for ever since he took these walks to Dyckman together with his dad.
“The expectation is just to hold the ninth banner. Me, I’m a real competitor, and I delight myself on successful. I undoubtedly need to go away my stamp in every single place I am going. Being at Kentucky, the usual is so excessive and all people expects success,” Koby says. “I simply need to have the chance, day-to-day, to continue to grow and be one of the best model of myself.”
Portraits by Alexander Zhang and UK Athletics.
