Nigerian forward finally lands at Palestra

Freshman ugonna Onyekwe should play an important role for the Quakers this season. You see Ugonna Onyekwe for the first time and don't know a whole lot about him. You meet him and it is not long before he makes a very good first impression. Onyekwe is good at first impressions. Take, for example, the first time many Penn fans caught a glimpse of Penn's freshman forward from Nigeria. It's the Red and Blue Scrimmage on October 23, and Onyekwe opens the scoring with an alley-oop layup from Michael Jordan and then comes back two plays later to dunk on Frank Brown's head. Fans have seen him for less than five minutes -- five minutes of a scrimmage that means almost nothing -- and he already has them cheering wildly for him. They are ready for four years of this kid. They heard the reports. They know what's going on. They know that Onyekwe was rated as one of the top 100 recruits in the nation by several services, that he is the supposed headliner of what is being called the best Penn recruiting class in 20 years. They know the 6'8" Onyekwe is needed. With both starting forwards from last year graduated, fans realize a few of the freshmen must contribute immediately. They expect Onyekwe to be one of them. They wanted a good first impression from this kid. They got one. Meet Onyekwe off the court and you'll get an equally good -- albeit quite different -- impression. The banger you see on the court, the big guy slamming the ball through the rim and slamming his body against his opponent in the low post, disappears. Instead, you meet a polite man, a quiet man, a man who wears a "What Would Jesus Do?" bracelet and quietly practices his shooting alone on a side basket after all of his teammates have left the court following a practice. It's obvious that Onyekwe is not the party animal of the Quakers. He is not likely to be the one cracking jokes or dominating a conversation in the locker room. "All the freshmen are pretty good friends and we all hang out together," said freshman forward Andrew Coates, who is also Onyekwe's roommate. "But when we go out to parties on the weekend, Ugonna usually stays in and does something else." Unlike many high-profile athletes, Onyekwe turns away from the party scene, preferring to hang out with friends in Van Pelt College House or to study during the weekends. "He's very quiet, very reserved, very mature," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said. "He knows who he is as a person and I think that's a real positive." Onyekwe does know who he is -- and that someone is certainly not your typical basketball recruit. For starters, he was born halfway across the world and will bring some geographic diversity to a team's whose starting five of a year ago were all natives of either Pennsylvania or New Jersey. And the route Onyekwe took to West Philadelphia certainly wasn't as easy as the simple trip across the Delaware River that Matt Langel and Geoff Owens had to make three years ago. Onyekwe's story begins a world away -- in a world that could not be farther from Philadelphia, in a place most Penn basketball players don't even think about. Onyekwe was born in Nigeria and lived there for most of his childhood. He would eventually end up at the Palestra, along with five other men, as part of a recruiting class that has Penn fans everywhere drooling over the possibilities. But when he was younger, basketball meant almost nothing to Onyekwe. Until he hit age 12, the game was foreign to him. Sure, he was a great athlete, but he did not know much about basketball and there was no reason at all to suggest that he would ever be recruited by a Division I program. "When I was in Nigeria, I used to play a little bit, but it was mostly recreation," Onyekwe said. That was because he never really had the opportunity to play on a team in an organized league in Nigeria. He was basically just experimenting with the sport. It was not until after his family moved to London when he was 14 years old that Onyekwe finally had the chance to play in an organized league. After living in Nigeria for all of his life and just playing basketball for fun, Onyekwe began to see his potential on the basketball court when he was in England. He played on club teams and saw that he could actually have a future in basketball, a game that was still somewhat new to him. And he also knew that any future he would have on the court would be in America, not in England. Club leagues in Great Britain just weren't doing it for Onyekwe. After all, the Brits are better known for scones and the Thames than for slam dunks and three pointers. "There are a lot of talented players over there, but it's just not organized very well," Onyekwe said. "The coaching wasn't great." Onyekwe needed good coaching. He needed someone to help him hone his raw talent and athleticism into a polished game. He found that person in Tony Tucker, then head coach at Mercersberg Academy in central Pennsylvania. "I really didn't know if I would have the chance to come over here, but when my family moved to London and I started playing for club teams and I saw that other people moved on from there to the States, I realized that I probably had the opportunity to do the same thing," Onyekwe said. "So I started looking into it, started making inquiries and my coaches happened to have connections over here, so it worked out." It worked out with Onyekwe landing at Mercersberg and having a chance to play Division I college basketball. Here he was, still a neophyte to this game, but one whose pure athleticism put him ahead of so many other basketball players his age. He worked hard at Mercersberg, averaging 15 points and 14 rebounds per game in his first season in the United States. He was learning at an accelerated speed, taking this game to which he was still becoming accustomed and improving everyday. He had the skill to play at most schools in the country, but most schools in the country didn't know much about him. Dunphy didn't even make an attempt to recruit him, never having even heard of him. Besides, it wouldn't have mattered. Onyekwe was already committed. Long Beach State was interested in him and the coaches there had helped him get into Mercersberg when he was in London. There was really no choice. The decision was made. Onyekwe signed his letter of intent and was set to go. There was no turning back. The lanky forward with arms like a seven-footer and an amazing leaping ability was headed to California. Or so the Long Beach State coaches would have liked to believe. Onyekwe made the commitment to play for the 49ers without knowing much about the school itself or the types of colleges in the United States. After discovering that Long Beach State was not exactly at the top of the academic world, Onyekwe wanted out. He wanted a better school, but he was locked in and the 49ers would not release him from his letter of intent. "I didn't think they had a good academic program there," Onyekwe said. "After a while, I didn't feel comfortable with that decision." To avoid sitting out another year -- he was already taking a post-graduate year at Mercersberg -- Onyekwe started looking at the non-scholarship programs in the Ivy and Patriot leagues. He visited Penn, Cornell and Princeton, finally deciding that he wanted to play for the Quakers. "We had seen him play a number of times and we knew Ugonna was a kid who obviously had some terrific athletic ability," Dunphy said. "It was almost [as if] he [was] saying he wanted to come to Penn as much as it was us recruiting him." So here he is. After barely four years of organized basketball, a move across the Atlantic, a letter of intent and a changed mind, Onyekwe has arrived at the Palestra. And now comes the time when making a good first impression will be most important. Recruiting USA called him the 55th best recruit in the nation. He was ranked as the nation's eighth best power forward at the Reebok Vegas Holiday Prep Classic. More importantly, he arrives at Penn as one part of the Sensational Six, the best thing to happen to the Penn recruiting scene since Dunphy landed Jordan, Langel and Owens three years ago. It may be the deepest class since the likes of Tony Price, Bobby Willis, Tim Smith and Matt White arrived at Penn in 1975, destined to lead the Quakers to the NCAA Final Four in 1979. "There's a bit of pressure and high expectations, I guess," Onyekwe said. "I try not to think about that stuff because one day you're up, one day you're down. I just have to go out and do the best I can do." Onyekwe will certainly have his chance. In his 10-plus years at Penn, Dunphy has not put much pressure on his freshman players, but with the loss of forwards Paul Romanczuk and Jed Ryan to graduation, Onyekwe will likely be needed to fill part of the void. But he will not be asked to carry this team. The '99-00 Quakers squad belongs to players like Jordan, Langel, Owens and Brown, not to the kids who just popped up on the scene a few months ago. These freshmen, however, are the future. Along with his five classmates, Onyekwe will be crucial to Penn's success in upcoming years. Yes, he is still raw. Onyekwe readily admits that he still has a lot to learn about the game of basketball. And his coach agrees. "I've made the statement that he might be the best athlete we've ever had come into the program at Penn, but being an athlete and playing basketball are two different things," Dunphy said. "He needs to learn some of the nuances of the game and his fundamentals need to improve. All that being said, the sky's the limit as far as his potential is concerned." Tonight, it all begins. Onyekwe will have four years to realize his potential as a Penn basketball player and it all starts with a 9 p.m. tip-off in Kentucky this evening. It is his first game at Penn. Expect him to play, and he will probably play well. Because if there is one thing that Onyekwe knows how to do well, it is how to make a good first impression.

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