{"id":820439,"date":"2024-10-22T14:58:34","date_gmt":"2024-10-22T18:58:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?p=820439"},"modified":"2024-10-22T14:58:36","modified_gmt":"2024-10-22T18:58:36","slug":"koby-brea-slam-252","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/college-hs\/koby-brea-slam-252\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington Heights Native Koby Brea Talks Realizing His Dream at Kentucky and Overcoming Obstacles as Best Shooter in College Basketball"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This story appears in SLAM 252. Get your copy now.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following a four-year career at Dayton, where he led the nation in three-point percentage last season, Washington Heights native Koby Brea is heading south to the school of his dreams, the University of Kentucky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It all started at those courts on Nagle Ave. In the heart of Washington Heights, a neighborhood north of Harlem, tucked behind the hallowed main court of Dyckman Park, lies a smaller half-court lined with a singular black fence. It\u2019s there that a young Koby Brea fostered his love for the game. Just a few blocks away from his parent\u2019s apartment, Koby would go to the court and meet up with his friends and other local kids to draft their own teams and hoop throughout
the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he was 6, he would lace up his kicks, grab his ball and head down the street with his dad, Stephan, to meet up with his pop\u2019s friends. They\u2019d travel from park to park, hooping to their hearts\u2019 content. \u201cThey still play to this day. I don\u2019t know how, but they do,\u201d Koby says. And there was Koby, witnessing that love for the game in real time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBeing around it, all you can do is really watch and enjoy the ride,\u201d he says. \u201cAny time they ran down one way, I\u2019d be on the other half trying to shoot, trying to get my ball and be quick before they came back down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A few years later, he was waking up at 5 a.m. to work out at those same courts. Everyone sleeping while he was working? That was the best motivation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dyckman set the standard for who Koby Brea wanted to be. In 2024, that would be the best shooter in college basketball and the latest addition for Mark Pope and the Kentucky Wildcats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fifteen years after first being introduced to the concrete courts, Koby is back at Dyckman. It\u2019s a piping hot mid-August afternoon and the sun is unrelenting. Pay it no mind, Koby\u2019s suited in a full Eric Emanuel baby blue tracksuit with matching \u201cIndustrial Blue\u201d Air Jordan 4s on-foot. After watching him learn to play and eventually compete in the summer Dyckman tournaments, his father, mother and youngest brother Tyler now stand off to the side as we snap photos. It\u2019s a family affair. For the Breas and Washington Heights, that\u2019s always been the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGrowing up in Washington Heights, it\u2019s like having a really big family around you,\u201d Brea explains. \u201cYou\u2019re just around a whole bunch of people that are just like you, that come from the same culture, the same background. We have a lot of Dominicans, a lot of Latin people, and any time you\u2019re walking down the street, you see somebody that\u2019s just like you, that looks just like you, talks just like you. It just feels like family.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The endless hours spent surrounded by his community, on and off the court, set the stage for his commitment to those who have poured into him. As he stands at center court with Tyler dribbling around his legs, he sees his own childhood mirrored back at him. It\u2019s an eerily familiar feeling, one he experienced just a few weeks prior to our shoot when he first stepped foot inside the Joe Craft Center in Lexington. For years, Koby envisioned himself suiting up in the Big Blue. Now it\u2019s a reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou see all the blood, sweat and tears that was put into that gym that I just walked into,\u201d he says of that visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When Koby wasn\u2019t dicing it up at Dyckman, he was watching Karl-Anthony Towns, Devin Booker and the rest of the mid-2010s Wildcats. He longed to get shots up underneath the weight of the eight banners that hung above. That level of prestige was captivating. So he aimed for it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Koby remembers the first time his coach at Monsignor Scanlan High School brought him to the campus in the Bronx. As they made small talk about the team and the school, the coach asked Koby where he wanted to play at the next level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI remember I was a kid with big dreams and I told him, I want to go to the University of Kentucky<\/em>,\u201d Koby says. \u201cAnd he looked at my dad and he was like, You\u2019ve got a wild one. I don\u2019t know if I can get you to Kentucky, but I\u2019ll make sure I get you somewhere<\/em>. That just goes to show that when you have people around you that are confident in you, want to push you the most you can, you also have that confidence in yourself that this is what I want to be and that\u2019s how I\u2019m going to make it. It sets it off for yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heading into the 2024-25 season, Koby Brea\u2019s not only suiting up for Kentucky, he\u2019s expected to help the program capture national prominence once again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Washington Heights native didn\u2019t just get to the blue blood of his dreams. He grinded his way toward the opportunity. Coming out of Scanlan as a second team All-New York selection, Koby set his sights on a career as a Dayton Flyer. He took home A-10 Sixth Man of the Year in his redshirt freshman season, but suffered a pair of stress fractures in each of his legs the following year that prevented him from taking that next leap he was ready for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, he spent the summer getting form shooting in while sitting in his wheelchair. It took the entirety of the offseason and a portion of the preseason to fully recover. With just two weeks of practices and conditioning under his belt, Koby proceeded to light nearly every net in the nation on fire, leading the Flyers into the second round of March Madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On 201 attempts, Koby led the nation in three-point percentage, nailing 49.8 percent of his shots from beyond the arc. Sorry, not sure if you caught that. Koby Brea hit damn near half of his shots from downtown<\/em>. Throw in 11.1 points and nearly 4 boards a game and the accolades started to flow. A second A-10 Sixth Man of the Year honor was appropriately bestowed and just like that, Koby was instantly on the radar of every major powerhouse in the country. At the end of the day, Kentucky always had the upper hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis year I just really wanted to take the opportunity to take a step back so I could take a couple steps forward. I came back to college with the expectation that all I was going to do this summer was work,\u201d Brea says. \u201cWork as hard as I could, work the hardest that I ever had, just to ensure that I had a great year at a great new place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wait, the work, it was all worth it. He made his stamp at Dyckman. He found himself at Dayton and inscribed himself into the college basketball record books. Now he\u2019s putting up shots in the same gym Booker did nearly a decade ago, as visions of the 2025 NBA Draft grow closer and closer to reality. But in the here and now, Koby Brea is letting those years worth of lessons guide him as he takes it day by day. He\u2019s stronger, healthier and more lethal than ever with the ball in his hands. And as he turns the chapter to his collegiate epilogue, there\u2019s a looming goal that Koby\u2019s longed for ever since he took those walks to Dyckman with his dad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe expectation is simply to hang the ninth banner. Me, I\u2019m a true competitor, and I pride myself on winning. I definitely want to leave my stamp everywhere I go. Being at Kentucky, the standard is so high and everybody expects success,\u201d Koby says. \u201cI just want to have the opportunity, day by day, to keep growing and be the best version of myself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Portraits by Alexander Zhang and UK Athletics.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This story appears in SLAM 252. Get your copy now. Following a four-year career at Dayton, where he led the nation in three-point percentage last season, Washington Heights native Koby Brea is heading south to the school of his dreams, the University of Kentucky. It all started at those courts on Nagle Ave. In the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":448,"featured_media":820443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65278,49436],"tags":[10183,10165,62525,440,65297,65276,65091,63573],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-820439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-252-the-magazine","category-college-hs","tag-college-basketball","tag-dyckman","tag-feature-1","tag-kentucky-wildcats","tag-koby-brea","tag-slam-252","tag-slamu","tag-university-of-kentucky"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/448"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820439"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":820455,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820439\/revisions\/820455"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820439"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=820439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}