Three former Wilmington University basketball players are pursuing professional careers overseas while dealing with foreign languages, local cuisine (rabbit stew with snails, anyone?), and a game that is a bit different from the American version.

The three — Jermaine Head, Caleb Matthews, and Randy Rickards — rank among the best players to emerge from 11th-year Coach Dan Burke’s Wildcat program. They signed professional contracts after graduating and flew off to three distinctly different parts of the world.

“They’re making a living doing what they love,” says Burke.

Head is playing in Georgia, an Eastern European country on the east coast of the Black Sea, south of Russia and bordering Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. A 6-0 guard, he’s on the VSA squad in the Georgia Superleague.

Matthews is in Malta, an island country situated in the Mediterranean Sea between Sicily and North Africa. He’s a 6-4 guard/small forward for Gzira Athleta Birkirkara in Malta’s BOV Division.

Rickards, a 6-7 forward, is in South America, where in two years he has played for teams in three countries — Peru, Uruguay, and now Chile, where he is on the CD Universidad Católica De Santiago squad in LNB, the country’s top league. 

Both on and off the court, the ex-Wildcats seem to have adjusted well to their foreign environments.

Head, the all-time leader in points and assists for WilmU’s men’s program, says the European game has slightly different rules than the American version, as well as a ball that is somewhat lighter. 

“Also, the competition is way better than college,” he says, “and the players are way bigger.” Head obviously has taken the changes in stride: He was the 2024 league MVP and also the MVP of the finals. 

The 28-year-old is one of three Americans on a roster of 13. Teams are limited to four Americans, and only three can be on the court at the same time.

Head says language hasn’t been a problem. “Most of the European players speak English, and so does our coach,” he says.

The team is headquartered in Tbilisi, a city of 1.2 million, which is almost a third of the country’s population. The team provides housing for foreign players, and Head has an apartment across the street from the other Americans on his squad.  

He calls the Tbilisi cuisine “pretty good,” especially khachapuri, a cheese-filled bread that resembles pizza. “And you can always get regular fast food,” he adds. “They have McDonald’s, Wendy’s, KFC.”

Head, who turned pro in 2022, says he’s occasionally homesick, but it passes quickly. After the nine-month season, he returns home in May to Edgewood, Maryland, and reconnects with family and friends. “But after a couple of weeks,” he says, “I’ve seen everybody and I’m ready to go back.”

He calls Burke “my guy,” adding: “We talk or text almost every day, still. He always checks up on me. It’s kind of like a father-son relationship.”

His former coach has fond memories of Head. “Jermaine was with us for four years, including his redshirt season, and he had an amazing career,” says Burke. “He was a great player. He could do anything — shoot, get to the basket, get a bunch of assists — really an all-around player. Every year he’s moved up and now he’s at the highest level in Georgia. Whenever he comes home, we’re one of his first stops. He comes by to check us out.”

Head has a degree in Business Management from WilmU and hopes to become an entrepreneur when his pro career ends. In 2021, he started a clothing line called Chosen 1, a name family and friends called him during his high school years. The athletic apparel includes socks, compression pants and shirts, and hoodies.

Playing some 2,300 miles to the west of Tbilisi, Matthews had what he calls “a really good experience” in his first season in Malta, where tourism is a major industry. “The weather and the country are beautiful, and I got to meet a lot of new people and experience new things,” he says.

Sharing the experience was his wife, Hannah, who is also a WilmU graduate. They were married in June of 2024, soon after he graduated with a degree in Business Management and Marketing.

Matthews has enjoyed sampling the local cuisine, including rabbit and snails, a staple of the Maltese diet. “The food is less processed and healthier for you, since in Europe they have more regulations on what can be used in their foods,” he says.

Like Head, he found that English lived up to its reputation as the international language. “In Malta,” he says, “everybody speaks Maltese, but about 90% of them also speak English, so there wasn’t too much of a language barrier.“

Matthews says the talent on the court is a mixed bag. “The imports from the U.S. were at a higher level than what I played against in college,” he says. “The locals weren’t as athletic, but they were very smart and understood the concept of playing a team game.”

He joined another American, 29-year-old veteran Kurt James, on the Athleta starting five. “In our league,” Matthews says, “there’s no limit of American players that can be on a team, but only two can be on the court at a time.”

Delaware’s 2017–18 Gatorade State Boys Basketball Player of the Year, Matthews guided Smyrna High School to back-to-back DIAA state championship games, and a title in 2017. He  enrolled at WilmU in 2020 after a year at New Jersey Institute of Technology. 

“My time at Wilmington was filled with lots of injuries and adversity,” he says, “but I was able to battle through and have a pretty successful college career while also meeting a few of my closest friends. Even though t was difficult and frustrating, I’m very grateful for the experience and everything I learned along the way.”

Burke confirms that self-evaluation. “Caleb was probably one of our most resilient guys,” he says. “He kept coming back from injuries, kept working hard, and ended up having a really good career for us. He was really competitive, and one of the best shooters we’ve ever had, and he was also a great passer. Guys loved playing with him because he saw the game so well.”  

After basketball, the 25-year-old Matthews hopes to get into coaching or enter the business world.

Unlike Head and Matthews, Rickards has encountered what he calls “a big culture shock,” largely because of the language.

“It’s been crazy,” he says. “In South America you may find like one out of every 10 people speak English. Not even my coach speaks English that well.”

Spanish is the predominant lan-guage in Peru, Uruguay, and Chile. “But,” says Rickards, “every country speaks a different version of Spanish. It’s like three different languages. So it’s been a little different, traveling and trying to navigate the city. I either use the Translator app on my phone or the broken Spanish I’ve learned.”

He’s also had to adapt to a different style of basketball. Along with slightly different rules, the South American game is more physical than the U.S. version.

“And,” Rickards adds, “I’m playing 35 to 40 minutes a game and am looked at to score and make plays for the team.”

Despite the challenges, he’s more than holding his own. In Uruguay, he earned Player of the Week honors a few times and was described by one observer as “the best scorer in the league.” In Peru, his team won the 2023 league championship.

“Uruguay has been my favorite country so far because of the team bond I got from them and just the way the club treated me,” Rickards says. “They weren’t a club with a lot of money or financial capabilities, but they made sure that everything was taken care of and I was very comfortable.”

He’s the only American on his current team, but, he says, “They’ve been very welcoming. There are still days when I wish I could have someone to just be able to relate to, but it’s been a good experience, so I don’t mind it.”

Calling his living situation “very good,” Rickards says he has a studio apartment in “a good neighborhood” of Santiago, Chile’s capital city of 7 million people.

“The club provides meals for me, but most of the time I cook,” he says. “If I don’t want to cook I can get fast food, or they have little restaurants near where I live.”

Rickards was on WilmU’s radar when he graduated from Cape Henlopen High School in 2018, but he made stops at Baltimore City Community College and Miami Dade College before becoming a Wildcat in 2020. 

“Being from Delaware and being able to play there, I enjoyed my time at Wilmington,” he says. “I built a good bond with Coach Burke and the staff. When I decided that I could have a professional career, Coach Shai Henry and Coach Andrew Feeley really helped me change my game there. The summer of my senior year I started working on my ability to shoot threes with them and it’s helped me be successful now.”

“Randy was too big for guards to guard and way too skilled for big guys to guard, so he was one of the most well-rounded forwards we’ve ever had,” Burke says. “He could dribble, he could shoot, he was ridiculously athletic, and he was a super competitive guy, a warrior.”

Rickards earned a degree in Elementary Education (K-6) and plans to become a teacher and perhaps a coach after he’s done with pro ball.

Burke and his staff have the knowledge and experience needed to help Wildcat players pursue a professional career. Everyone on the staff played college ball and Feeley had a 15-year international career in Japan, Slovenia, France, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and most recently Uruguay.

Looking forward to the 2025–26 season, Burke says, “We have several main contributors returning. Our young group gained valuable experience and finished the year playing very well. We’re expecting that momentum to carry over and lead to a successful season.” 

— Bob Yearick