Columbia Basketball Player Dreams of Ivy League Championship, Future in Medicine
By Alexander Eule
Feb. 15, 2006

Waiting outside his Columbia University fraternity house on 114th Street Monday evening, Ben Nwachukwu easily stands out. And it’s not just because of his 6-foot 8-inch frame. It’s the studious and professional manner suggested by his glasses, tie and neatly pressed dress shirt and slacks.

He’s also exactly on time for an interview, not a common trait among college sophomores. Nwachukwu (pronounced Wah-CHOO-koo) has made a practice of defying expectations since he entered Columbia College in the fall of 2004.  The starting center on Columbia’s basketball team, Nwachwuku is taking 21 academic credits this spring in pursuit of a double major in classics and psychology. All the while, he’s fulfilling the additional pre-med requirements along with Columbia’s famously strict core curriculum. 

The Nigerian-born student is the first pre-med Columbia basketball player in at least five years, according to Jacqueline Blackett, Columbia’s associate athletics director for student-athlete support services. “Only a rare young man can do what he’s able to do,” says Columbia basketball coach Joe Jones about his center’s combination of athletic and academic pursuits.

Following a recent game against Harvard in which Nwachukwu notched his third double-double of the season, Jones referred to him and sophomore forward John Baumann as the “backbone of our program.” Nwachukwu leads his team in shooting percentage and is second to Baumann in rebounding and scoring.

Before even beginning his playing career, Nwachukwu broke with conventional wisdom when he chose Columbia over perennial Ivy-basketball powerhouse, the University of Pennsylvania. That choice is a good part of what motivates Nwachukwu, the student-athlete says: “I want to do something that hasn’t been done.”

His pre-med status, and double-major is part of that goal, but his enthusiasm is clear when talking about the possibility of helping Columbia win its first Ivy League Championship since 1968. “I feel like the reward is going to be sweeter to win the championship at a place where it hasn’t been done in 40 years than to just be another string in a line of champions at Penn,” Nwachukwu says during an interview in the lobby of his Kappa Delta Rho fraternity house. 

In his first two years, that goal has seemed remote. As a freshman, Nwachukwu’s team finished last in the Ivies with a 3-11 conference record. So far this year, things have not gotten any better. After a 5-0 start in non-conference games, the Lions have lost five straight league games and returned to the Ivy cellar with a 1-7 league record.

While Penn once again sits atop the league this season, Nwachukwu says he remains happy with his choice of colleges: “I can’t sit here and tell you that I’m not disappointed at our performance and our results, so far.” But, he adds, “I think we’re still on the right path.” Despite two seasons of disappointment, the Lions, in fact, remain a young team. Four of the five starters for much of this season have been underclassmen.

As for his career dreams, Nwachukwu’s choice has helped already. When he was being recruited by Jones, Nwachukwu, an aspiring cardiac surgeon, met with Dr. Eric Rose, the chairman of the surgery department at Columbia’s College of Physicians and surgeon-in-chief at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital . “On my visit, they told me he was the Kobe Bryant of medicine.” This summer, Nwachukwu has already received an offer to work in the lab of 2004 Nobel-prize winner Richard Axel, a Columbia University professor who studies the olfactory system.

Nwachukwu also had offers from Stanford and Rice, but he came to New York, he says, because “for me, it’s always school first and basketball second.”

A year and half into his collegiate experience, Nwachukwu seems to have found a happy balance between the two. He has a 3.5 grade point average – “It’s respectable, I guess. I’m trying to work it up,” he says – and continues to improve as a basketball player.

Outside of the gym, Nwachukwu epitomizes the preppy student.  (In the team’s media guide, Nwachukwu sticks out as the only player wearing glasses.) “We love him,” says sophomore point guard Brett Loscalzo, one of Nwachukwu’s closest friends on the team.  Because he’s sort of the backbone of our academics. He always the one pulling us up.” Nwachukwu’s 21 credits are well above the typical course load. To graduate, a Columbia student needs to average 15.5 credits per semester over four years.

On the court the 240-pound Nwachukwu is a formidable presence as well. “As a basketball player, he could be, and he is, a terrific player at this level,” Jones says, adding he has much room left to improve, particularly on defense.

For his part, Nwachukwu says his ball-handling and perimeter skills need the most work. “It kind of limits me,” he says. “Coach likes to play a free-moving offense, where the big man can get on the perimeter and he’s kind of had to change his offense in the last year or two to keep me in the post.”

Nwachukwu says his coach and teammates constantly yell at him to “get in your home” in the paint. “Because every time I venture on the perimeter it’s a turnover waiting to happen.”

Nwachukwu is open when talking about his current shortcomings, but he became sheepish discussing his most recent game against Brown, where Jones kept him on the bench for most of the second half. “Coach tried to motivate me, and I didn’t respond,” he says. “So I didn’t play the rest of the second half.” His 14 points and 7 minutes were well off his season average of 11.5 points and 23 minutes per game.

Nwachukwu, who attended high school at St. Augustine Prep in Richland, N.J., was one of Jones’ first recruits at Columbia after the coach took over the program in 2003. The player says that link has given him a special connection with his coach. “I remember after the Stony Brook game, I had a double-double and my career high in rebounds,” Nwachukwu says of the victory, Columbia’s fourth of five straight wins. “And he took me to his house, and basically just tore into me. He was just letting me know even in victory you can’t be complacent, you can’t relax. You always have to get better.”

As for Nwachukwu’s potential, Jones says, “He’s just scratching the surface of what he could be here if he works hard.”

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