The Bobcats acquired Voskuhl from Phoenix on Tuesday in exchange for a conditional 2007 second round draft pick, and the 6-11, 255-pound center couldn’t be happier to be headed to the Queen City.

“I’m really excited,” Voskuhl said. “We had a terrific year in Phoenix last year, but unfortunately I didn’t get to play as much as I had wanted to. It was a lot of fun out there, but to some degree it was frustrating because I didn’t get to play that much. Anybody who gets traded to a new team has some degree of excitement, and for me, this is really exciting because I feel I’m going to come in here and have a really good chance to get playing time.”

Voskuhl will enter 2005-06 as a five-year NBA veteran, but this might be his best opportunity to show what he can do. He has averaged 4.5 points and 3.9 rebounds in his career, with his best year coming in 2003-04 when he averaged 6.6 points and 5.2 rebounds, while averaging a career-best 24.3 minutes.

As a role player in Phoenix for four years and one year in Chicago (2000-01), Voskuhl has averaged 16 minutes coming off the bench – numbers he hopes, and has been told by General Manager & Head Coach Bernie Bickerstaff, will increase in Charlotte.

“I think that coming in and having coach telling me right away that, yes, they’re going to give me a chance to play and want me to be a part of this team, is encouraging for anybody,” Voskuhl said. “It seems like this is a good group of guys and a young group of guys, that I’m looking forward to playing with.”

One Bobcats player Voskuhl is looking to playing with is fellow Houstonian and former University of Connecticut player Emeka Okafor, who left UConn following the Huskies championship run in 2004. Voskuhl won a national championship with UConn in 1999, and while they never played together, he is looking forward to sharing the court with the 2005 NBA Rookie of the Year.

“I’m excited to get the chance to play with Emeka [Okafor], with him being a UConn guy and also a Houston guy,” Voskuhl said. “There’s definitely some ties there, and we share the bond of having both won national championships with the Huskies. I’m looking forward to playing with Emeka and getting to know him better.”

One thing the Bobcats have stressed is acquiring players with a championship mentality – drafting Okafor in 2004 and Raymond Felton and Sean May in 2005, fresh off their national championship run with North Carolina. In Voskuhl, they have added one more championship piece to their roster.

“I think bringing in guys who have won championships at any level makes a difference, because you have guys that are proven winners,” Voskuhl said. “When you come from a winning school with a winning tradition, it helps a lot because there are a lot of guys out there who are very talented but have not necessarily won at such a high level.”

Voskuhl also realizes that he is currently the most experienced NBA player on the Bobcats roster and that, aside from bringing a championship mentality to Charlotte, he will also be looked to as a veteran presence on and off the court by his coaches and young teammates.

“It’s kind of funny because I’ve been playing for five years, but in Phoenix I was still one of the younger guys,” Voskuhl said. "It’s going to be a different role here for me. I’m going to go out there and try to set an example for the way things should be done, and I think that’s going to be fun. I just have to go out and play and work my way into the system. I just want to go in, work hard and try to help us win as many games as we can.

“I think that we’re going to surprise some people this year. I think we’re going to be a lot better than what people think.”