The ASU men’s basketball team has its own international man of mystery.

He stands 6-feet-5-inches tall, has the semblance of a five-o-clock shadow and is as laid back as they come.

No matter what language he’s speaking.

Sophomore forward Rihards Kuksiks, originally from Riga, Latvia, is trilingual. He speaks Latvian, Russian and English.

Latvia is an eastern European country, slightly larger than West Virigina. It’s bordered by the Baltic Sea to the west, Estonia to the north, Lithuania to the south and Belarus and Russia to the east.

Despite being on the team for nearly two full seasons, some of his teammates are still trying to figure Kuksisks out.

“Dude is strange,” ASU senior forward Jeff Pendergraph said. “I can’t read him. Rick’s a cool guy — he’s funny, but you can tell he’s a foreigner.”

Pendergraph said he can always tell when Kuksiks is excited, though. Usually, after hitting a big shot, Kuksiks will run down the court with his fists clenched down by his thighs, usually accompanied with a barbaric yell of some sort.

Pendergraph also knows when Kuksiks is angry. He usually swears in his native tongue.

“He’ll get mad about something and say something [in a different language],” Pendergraph said. “Next thing you know, we’ll start picking on him and saying it again. Then he gets really mad because we don’t say it right and we just butcher it. Then he’ll just look at us like, ‘Whatever, I can’t deal with you guys.’”

ASU sophomore guard James Harden said he’s tried to learn a couple of words from Kuksiks but only knows swear words.

When asked to describe Kuksiks, Harden also used the word “strange.”

Like many other Latvians, Kuksiks’ background is multicultural. His father, Nokolay, is from Belarus and his mother, Gunta, from Latvia.

Rick — as his teammates call him — grew up in an apartment in the Latvian capital, about 15 minutes from the downtown area.

If it wasn’t for his brother, Andris, who knows what Rick would be doing?

At a young age, he followed Andris’ footsteps. Like his brother, he first played hockey before turning to basketball.

His brother, now 25, has since let ladies and partying take over his lifestyle, but Rick’s focus always stayed on basketball.

It’s what brought him over to the United States in the first place.

As a kid, he heard of a few Russian and Lithuanian players that had taken up residence at a school called the Florida Air Academy, so he looked into it.

At the age of 15, Kuksisks made the 20-hour trip across the world to enroll at the school, about 70 miles southwest of Orlando.

Those first few months were tough. He arrived about a week before school started and was thrown into the cultural fire.

“I saw the school was a military school and all that stuff, and I was like ‘Oh, no,’” Kuksiks said. “It was hard. At the beginning I just wanted to go home, then I just got used to it. It took me three months to get over it. [I just kept telling myself] ‘Basketball starts soon.’”

He said goodbye to all of his friends, family and a vibrant culture, which he still identifies himself with.

No more Jani — a national holiday and annual festival that takes place every June 23 and 24 that often includes serious partying.

No more zirniu pikas — a favorite Latvian pea dish mixed in with bacon and other things.

And definitely no more Dziesmu svetki — an event where the whole country converges on Riga every five years to come together and sing songs.

You have to understand that folk singing and dancing play a huge role in Latvian culture. Every high school kid is required to take classes in Latvian folk music. But Rick said he never got to in to it, saying he only cared about basketball.

Nowadays, Kuksiks calls back home about once a month and he travels back to Latvia every summer. Since 2003, Kuksiks has been playing for the Latvian national youth teams, going from the under-16 team to the under-18 team and eventually the under-20 team. A few times he was called up to play at the higher level and shared the court with Andris Biedrins, who now plays with the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.

Kuksiks said the biggest difference between the European game and the American game is the athletic ability of most players stateside. He said “everyone” can shoot in Latvia, though, calling it “ridiculous.”

Kuksiks is no different, as he has consistently ranked among the nation’s best 3-point shooters this season. And as the legend goes, told by teammate Derek Glasser, Kuksiks hit 88-of-100 3-pointers during one of his first ASU practices.

Kuksiks had quite a prolific career during high school and averaged nearly 30 points per game during his senior year. His team made three consecutive state title games, winning two of them. He said he dropped plenty of 40-point games on his opponents and usually threw down a few dunks per game.

But his highest career scoring output occurred in Latvia during the summer after ninth grade. He dropped 89 points against what he called “terrible competition.”

Since coming to ASU, Kuksiks said he pretty much doesn’t have a life.

“School, practice, study hall, home,” he said.

Such is life for a Division-I basketball player.

But he still finds time to watch reality TV shows. He loved Flava Flav’s “Flavor of Love” until it went off the air, but now he watches “I Love Money 2” and “For the Love of Ray J.”

During his free time back home, though, you could find Rick in the club. Perhaps with a bottle full of bub.

Kuksiks still listens to some music from back home, too. Every now and then he’ll listen to the popular European rock group Brainstorm or the Russian rapper Timati.

He said he doesn’t really understand baseball but enjoys football. Though he may not be a pigskin expert, he loves making predictions on who’s going to win.

When asked if could describe Kuksiks off the court, ASU coach Herb Sendek said “not really.”

He did laud Kuksiks for his ability to cope with such a drastic cultural change, though.

“I can’t express enough admiration for a guy like Rick,” Sendek said, “who at such a young age, comes into a completely different environment and culture away from lifelong friends and family and basically starts over. Sometimes it’s so easy for all of us to take some things for granted. And then you see a young man like Rick make such a sacrifice and not take it for granted.”

During the fall of 2006, Rick was playing in a high school game and getting scouted by former ASU assistant coach Archie Miller. One day later, Herb was in town and asking Rick to come to Tempe.

A few weeks passed and Rick made his official visit to the ASU campus. He was also looking at Kansas, Virginia Tech and Saint John’s. Citing the possibility of immediate playing time and the quality of his fellow recruiting class — including Harden ­­­­— Kuksiks landed in Tempe.

He saw ASU as a “program on the rise” and couldn’t have been more correct.

It didn’t start out perfectly, though.

Upon arriving, Kuksiks suffered pain in the iliotibial band of his left knee, limiting his jumping capabilities. For the first time in his life, Rick wasn’t a starting player. It was hard for him to sit on the bench and watch.

But Kuksiks came on strong near the end of his freshman season and has been a mainstay in the starting lineup ever since.

All things considered, he’s just another kid trying to make it to the NBA.

Doesn’t sound so strange, now, does it?

Reach the reporter at alex.espinoza@asu.edu.