Update: He may not be heading to Europe, but Joevan Catron did finally ink his first professional contract.

The Wollongong Hawks of Australia's National Basketball League announced early Friday morning that they've signed the former Oregon Duck.

And while the past few months have seen Catron go from nearly signing in Europe, to sitting around and waiting for more solid offers to come in, that part of the process is in the past. Now Catron prepares for the long unknown road ahead playing pro ball.

First up, the roughly 9000 mile trek from Chicago (where Catron's been holding workouts) to Australia. The other good news: he's taking some family with him.

“It’s a big move for my family and I, but we knew after college my professional career would probably start overseas, it’s great that I get to start that in Australia and we’re excited about being in Wollongong this season," said Catron, who will report to the team in late August.

“I’m really looking forward to coming to Wollongong and playing under Coach (Gordie) McLeod."

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Hurry up and wait.

That's the game Joevan Catron is playing right now as he looks for his first professional contract playing basketball in Europe.

“The overseas teams are thinking they’re going to sign a Kobe Bryant or a Dwight Howard right now,” Catron told the Register-Guard. 

“Their hopes are all up trying to get those guys, and it kind of puts the first-year guys in a back hole.”

The former Oregon Duck 6-foot-6 forward averaged 15.9 points and 6.6 rebounds last season and has been splitting time between workouts back in Chicago and spending time with his infant son down in Eugune. It's all part of the waiting game until his basketball future is figured out.

Unfortunately, the NBA lockout has put a kink in Catron's plan.

To say A.J. Moye’s life over the last eight months has been tough would be a gross understatement.

For what the former Indiana Hoosier guard turned overseas pro from Iceland, Finland and two stops in Germany’s Beko BBL has endured certainly is a testimony to his faith. Because last November nobody would have imagined how drastic his life could change, not even Moye.

That’s when he took a shot in the head at practice with Frankfurt’s Deutsche Bank Skyliners.

That’s when he suffered the stroke.

That’s when pain extended beyond basketball.

“You must understand, I suffered an injury that was much more than physical,” Moye told Beyond the Beat.

“It was just so frustrating and disappointing.”

It’s amazing what can happen in twelve months’ time.

Last year around this time Pooh Jeter was preparing to sign his NBA contract with the Sacramento Kings, but ask the man today what his plans are for next season and he’ll confess his future is up in the air. One thing is for sure – he won’t be back in Sacramento.

The end of Jeter’s tenure with the Kings was pretty much confirmed during the NBA Draft when the Sacramento Kings selected both BYU's Jimmer Fredette and Isaiah Thomas from Washington in late June. With Sacramento declining to pick up the option on Jeter’s two-year contract and with the ongoing NBA lockout situation, the 27-year-old free agent  who played overseas in the Ukraine, Spain and Israel before signing with the Kings last July said he’s in the decision making process about returning to Europe for next season.

"With the lockout it has to be Europe," Jeter told the Sacramento Bee.

"I'm hearing from a lot of European teams and they're talking good so hopefully I'll decide something by next week maybe and definitely try to get the NBA-out clause and all that. But if I've got to be over there for a year, I've got to be over there a year. And I'll just have to come back continue to do what I do."

It was well over two years ago when Portland based music producer Kevin Moyer contemplated working with an athlete on a track for his next album project, and one particular member of the Portland Trail Blazers came to mind.

It was like drafting a number one pick all over again.

Now Moyer- in connection with Greyday Records - is set to release “Live From Nowhere Near You: Volume Two”, a 3-disc benefit venture on Tuesday that combines street musicians with some common names in the music industry today.  Profits from the album sales goes to support homeless and street youth programs in the Pacific Northwest with the compilation including performances by the likes of Eddie Vedder, members of The Strokes, Third Eye Blind, Dandy Warhols, Portland’s own Bosko, stic. man of Dead Prez and Greg Oden among many others.

Wait, Greg Oden?

Moyer recently spoke with Beyond the Beat to discuss the origins of the album, how Oden was actually his fall back plan, what it was like to work with the big fella on the track, and the full track release (see link below) of Oden’s vocal debut on “Live From Nowhere”.

16. Bar Tremolinos (O-No-You-Den)

Performed by Carlos Vamos and Lindsay Buckland with Greg Oden

Carlos Vamos: electric guitar, e-bow and tapping guitars, drums;

Lindsay Buckland: electro acoustic midi dulcimer;

Greg Oden: all vocals, oohs, ahhs, grunts, laughing, and talking;

Lisa Lengwenus : “I’m Scared”

I met Carlos and Lindsay busking on a busy street square in Amsterdam while backpacking. These are the two street musicians who also appear on the front cover of this album. A few years later I recorded Greg Oden adding vocals to the track when he was healthy and beginning to dominate on the basketball court again, just before another devastating knee injury. A lot of this effort is about believing in individuals and helping them get back up when they fall down, and I look forward to watching the strength of his legs catch up with that of his enormous heart.

Ian McCarthy has been around basketball long enough to know some things take time.

And apparently now is the time.

You can officially add one more league optimistic to welcome a bevy of locked out NBA players’ to their stable, especially those players not ready to jump all the way overseas. But Canada’s newly formed National Basketball League is showing they are more than another minor league jump off toward professional basketball.

They are in the game for good.

Last week the NBL issued a press release and invitation to locked out players across the NBA to come to Canada with team president Andre Levingston – and owner of the Halifax Rainmen - stating the league would take a flier on, “third-tier type players”, knowing full well the upstart league isn’t in a financial position to shoot for the stars.

“Andre was referring to players on the lower side of the NBA salary spectrum as opposed to the mega stars,” Ian McCarthy, interim Chief Operating Officer of the National Basketball League of Canada, told Beyond the Beat.