For Negedu, Second Time Is a Charm;Lobo Transfer Back on Court After Life-Threatening Scene
Second chances in basketball are a wonderful thing. A second chance at life? That's obviously off the charts. University of New Mexico men's basketball player Emmanuel Negedu recently received both.
"Man, it feels great," says Negedu, a sophomore transfer from Tennessee. "I'm just enjoying life right now. My teammates, my coaches, my training staff - everything's going great. I'm just happy."
In September 2009, Negedu (pronounced Na-Gay-Doo), then 21, had just completed a team weightlifting session and had been racing a teammate on the Vols' indoor football field.
Negedu collapsed, lost consciousness and had no pulse.
The school reported that the Tennessee athletic trainer and its director of sports medicine used an automatic external defibrillator and performed CPR to revive Negedu.
The chiseled 6-foot-7, 225-pound forward survived and then had surgery. Negedu sat out the entire season, and planned to return in 2010-11. Last spring, he says a doctor in Tennessee cleared him to rejoin the team, but the athletic department refused to clear him.
Negedu tried to transfer to Indiana, but says the same thing happened; doctors cleared him, but the IU athletic department did not.
On to UNM.
Negedu, who averaged 7.2 minutes, 1.9 rebounds and 1.7 points as a freshman in 2008-09, again got cleared by doctors.
This time, the Lobo athletic department did as well.
"He's been awesome," fourthyear coach Steve Alford says of Negedu, whom he also recruited when he coached at Iowa. "Any time you go through, not only a medical experience, but even just transferring, there's a humbling experience. From when we recruited him at Iowa, I see a much more humble, much more coachable kid who is very excited.
"... He gives us a big-time athlete. He can run. He can jump forever. He can guard a post, he can guard a guard. We feel his best basketball is ahead of him."
By NCAA rules, transfers must sit out a year once they attend their new school. But because of his health condition, and the fact he didn't play all of last season, Negedu received a medical exemption from the NCAA to play this season. Thus, UNM has an experienced 22-year-old sophomore big body.
"My role is to play hard and get some rebounds, that's what I'm going for," he says. "I don't know (if I'll start); that's up to the coaches. Whenever they want me to play, I'll play."
Negedu was heavily recruited after making a name for himself at the AAU level a few years back. When he announced he was transferring in the spring, he says there was a long list of schools recruiting him, including UNLV, Iowa State, Rhode Island, Oregon, Nebraska and Memphis. He made an official recruiting visit to Indiana.
But he says he's loving Albuquerque.
"It's just great, I just love it out here," he says. "I feel like I'm back home."
Home for Negedu is Kaduna, Nigeria. He he left there about seven years ago to pursue his hoop dreams. He says his entire family is still back in Nigeria.
But if Negedu ever gets homesick, he's not showing it - as his new teammates can attest.
"He's always laughing, he's always happy," says senior point guard Dairese Gary. "Hearing his story and what he went through, you have to look at yourself and just be thankful for the life that you've got. He got a second chance, but it makes your realize that, right now, you have to take advantage of what you have.
"You don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, you don't know what's going to happen in the next hour. You have to give your all and just be thankful for what you've got."
Negedu certainly is.
"A second chance man, that's when you appreciate it more," he says with an ear-toear grin. "That's why you give everything you can - like little stuff that you didn't think about before, that's when you see how important it is to be in this position right now. ... You never know what you have until you lose it." Nov. 3
Eastern N.M. at UNM (exhibition), the Pit, 7 p.m. Radio: KKOB-AM (770)
