San Francisco junior David Fuchs calls his hometown of Vienna, Austria, the most beautiful city he’s ever seen. It’s a city of great culture and diversity, the birthplace of Marie Antoinette, where Sigmund Freud developed his theories of psychoanalysis, where Mozart and Beethoven composed many of their musical masterpieces.
“They don’t tell you what you have to do,” Fuchs said. “It’s a very free place. You can play football, go skiing, play basketball, play music. I’ve got friends who do all kinds of things. They tell you that you can do whatever you want there.”
For Fuchs, that meant leaving his homeland as a fourth-grader to pursue his basketball dreams. Taller than other boys in his class, Fuchs fell in love with the game as a second-grader. Two years later, he made the jump to Ulm, Germany to learn the game on a serious level at the professional team’s youth academy.
He still may be a long shot to join Jakob Poeltl as just the second native Austrian to play in the NBA, but any expectation that Fuchs would become Vienna’s next great composer, as he said, "went out the window fast.”
Moving 300 miles from home as a youngster was not easy. “It was a hard decision to make, but looking back on it . . . probably the best decision of my life,” said Fuchs, who learned to cook and wash his own clothes when he reached his teen-aged years.
Eventually working his way to Ulm’s senior professional team, Fuchs helped it win the 2023 Bundesliga championship as a 19-year-old. “The best day of my life,” he recalled. “That’s where I really saw for the first time how much basketball can matter to people.”
The game means a lot to the 22-year-old, who at 6-foot-8 and 245 pounds remains bigger than most of friends and classmates. David Fuchs (pronounced DAH-vid Fooks), has used his size and power to become one of the most surprising — and productive — players in the West Coast Conference.
A transfer from Rhode Island, he is averaging 12.4 points and ranks fourth in the conference at 7.1 rebounds per game. Over the past seven games, those numbers are 15.1 points and 7.9 rebounds.
USF head coach Chris Gerlufsen is happy to have Fuchs on his side. The Dons (11-6, 3-1) open a two-game weekend set in Southern California, playing at LMU (10-7, 1-3) on Thursday at 8 p.m. (CBS Sports Network). Then they’ll make a stop at Pepperdine (5-12, 0-4) on Saturday at 5 p.m. (ESPN+).
“Off the court he’s really smart, high IQ guy. He’s a jokester, loves to have a good time,” Gerlufsen said of Fuchs. “On the floor, he has a different persona in terms of being the tough guy and provides a real physical presence for us that we need. He’s got a competitive spirit that I like. He kind of plays like an MMA fighter, which isn’t a bad thing.”
Fuchs acknowledges he gets “pretty intense” on the court while trying to play as hard as Kobe Bryant, defend in the mode of Kawhi Leonard and be as fundamentally sound as Tim Duncan. "Most of my career I’m going to be a player who’s seen through my physicality and effort and hard plays on the court,’ he said. “I’m not going to be a Stephen Curry.”
His strength and aggressiveness show in his remarkable ability to draw fouls. Gerlufsen said he’s second nationally, drawing 9.5 per 40 minutes, which translates to 13.71 free throw attempts over the same time span.
How good is that? Saint Mary’s Paulius Murauskas and Gonzaga’s Graham Ike — two of the league’s very best big men — shoot an average of 9.41 and 7.93 free throws per 40 minutes, respectively.
Fuchs stops short of agreeing that opposing defenses must resort to fouls in order to slow him down near the basket. “I want to stay as humble as possible, of course,” he said. “Sometimes, if I’m at the right spot they have to foul me. Also, with my free throw history, sometimes I think the coach might tell them they should foul me. Maybe it’s a mix of both.”
Fuchs is converting at 65.1 percent from the foul line, which is progress from his two seasons at Rhode Island, but he was disappointed after missing eight free throws last Saturday in a 73-68 win over Portland.
“Obviously, frustrating. I kind of felt like I kept them in the game by missing that many free throws,” he said. “I’ve improved slightly from last year. If I make another jump this year, I will definitely complain less if I’m around the 70 (percent) mark.”
Gerlufsen is hoping this weekend prompts the Dons to play at the level he believes is in them. He is seeking one thing in particular. “Just the consistency piece is the biggest thing,” he said, noting the Dons’ slow starts in several recent games. “Definitely can’t do that when you’re going on the road, playing a really good LMU team.
“I don’t think we’re anywhere close to where we can get as a team. I think we still have a lot of room for improvement as a team, which for a coach is good,” he said. “I like the potential of our group. I’d much rather hit our stride in late January than be as good as we can be in November or early December.”
Fuchs was making progress while playing off the bench early this season and Gerlufsen was ready to move him into the starting lineup when a ghastly off-the-court incident put him on the shelf for three games.
Riding home after practice on his motorized scooter, Fuchs hit some sort of bump in the road, which flipped his scooter and sent him hard to the asphalt. “That was horrible,” he said. “I’m still not sure what happened.”
He landed palms down on the street, leaving them bloodied. His face experienced the same fate —he broke two teeth that need crowns and his upper lip “was shredded into three pieces,” requiring it be sewn it back together.
Finally healthy enough to return to the court, Fuchs scored 20 points against Loyola Chicago and a season-high 23 vs. Morgan State in his first two games in mid-December. He’s posted double-doubles in two of the Dons’ past three games.
Fuchs’ foremost concern is winning, which he agrees will come as the Dons develop greater consistency.
“I’m very optimistic where we stand right now. We’ve won three or our last four games with not playing to our standards so I think if we improve from game to game, we can do great things in the league, for sure,” he said.
“At times we look kind of lost on defense, we don’t communicate well. Same thing goes for offense. We don’t look like a unit at all times, which is definitely something we should strive for because those times we are locked in as a team it looks like we’re unbeatable.”