News: IMG Basketball Academy

Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, is an industrial city, similar in size to Tucson. You can sniff in the autumn air and get a snootful of pollution from the huge iron and steel plants.

You can get to the Black Sea from Dnipropetrovsk in no time. You can also get to Belarus, Russia and Romania. Nothing to it. Dnipropetrovsk is an old Soviet city at which nuclear arms have long been designed and manufactured.

So don't expect to see it in the popular tourism brochures.

UA freshman center Kyryl Natyazhko lived the first 17 years of his life in Dnipropetrovsk. He learned how to speak Ukranian, Russian and Lithuanian. Try that sometime.

He wanted to come to America and play basketball, attend a school/hoops-factory such as Arizona, advance to the NBA and make millions. It is a dream that reaches across the ocean all the way to Ukraine if you, like Natyazhko, are 6 feet 10 inches tall and are relatively quick and coordinated.

He watched his cousin Kyrylo Fesenko grow to 6 feet 9 inches, 275 pounds, make the Ukranian National basketball team and work a deal with the NBA's Utah Jazz, for which now he is a backup center making $1 million annually. So you know there are athletic genes in the family, and, what's more, an athletic tradition in Dnipropetrovsk itself.

The most famous athlete from Dnipropetrovsk is 1994 Olympic gold medal figure skater Oksana Baiul. Who's next? It's probably Igor Olshansky, pass rusher extraordinaire of the Dallas Cowboys, who signed an $18 million deal with America's Team after playing for the Oregon Ducks.

When we say, "give me your tired, your poor…" we also meant to say give us your Igor, your Oksana, your Kyrylo and your Kyryl. Is this a great country or what?

In the fall of 2007, when Natyazhko arrived at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., he was obsessed at learning the language. He would read Webster's dictionary. He would write English words and phrases and fix them to the wall in his dorm room.

And now he's a four-language man. That's gotta lead the Pac-10, right?

If you are 6-10 and can shoot the rock, as Natyazhko can, you are discovered almost overnight at the IMG Academy. It is a place where people go to get discovered. Vince Carter and Tayshaun Prince played there. So did Luol Deng, Sebastian Telfair and Tyrus Thomas.

The UA has gone to Bradenton several times to connect with recruits from the world-famous Leadbetter Golf Academy. Julia Kraschinski, who helped the Wildcats win the 2001 NCAA championship, prepped at IMG. So did Josh Esler, a standout golfer for the UA men's team earlier this decade. The top female junior golfer in Europe, Julieta Granada, now on the LPGA Tour, committed to play for Arizona but turned pro before she could enroll here.

So it was only a matter of time before Arizona, which mined basketball-rich Oak Hill Academy for NBA players Ben Davis and Stephen Jackson, got a blue-chipper from IMG. As it turns out, Natyazhko was Sean Miller's first recruit.

The first time Miller spoke publicly about Natyazhko, he got to the point. "He can dribble, shoot free throws and catch the ball," Miller said. It was code for: He's not a stiff (of which we've seen a few).

Tuesday night in the UA's 96-55 exhibition victory over Western New Mexico, Natyazhko continued to show that, indeed, he is not a stiff. He can shoot, run the court, play the pick-and-roll with Nic Wise and let's just say that by the 2011-12 season, he projects to be a holy terror in the Pac-10.

But he is so raw that perhaps Miller should erect some "CAUTION: WORK IN PROGRESS" stitching across the shoulders of Natyazhko's jersey No. 1.

"I feel like I'm getting better every day," he said. "I'm getting in better shape."

On Tuesday, he scored six points and grabbed six rebounds in 19 minutes, which would be a wonderful statistics line against a Pac-10 contender. If those are his season averages, it would probably be a success.

Miller knows what is likely to happen next. Coaches will design plays to exploit Natyazhko's relative inexperience. It will fall on Natyazhko to learn on the job.

"He's a very hard worker," Miller says. "His improvement will reflect that."

What Natyazhko must do is not become a star, but a reliable starter. By February or March, it won't be a shock if he becomes the leading Ukranian player in NCAA basketball. So far, that honor goes to Virginia Commonwealth power forward Kirill Pischalnikov, who, as a senior, has had time to work at it.

Natyazhko is just getting started. It's going to be a pleasure watching him grow.