Feb. 20, 2006
By Evan Meyer - Sports Vault
When the 2005-06 season began, one of the big questions surrounding the Cleveland State Vikings was where would the inside scoring come from after the departure of Omari Westley who led the team in scoring in 2003-04 and twice led the Horizon League in rebounds.
In the middle of the 2004-05 season, the Vikings announced that forward Ije Nwankwo would join the team in 2005-06 after transferring from Purdue University. Little did anyone know how much of an impact the junior from Ann Arbor, Michigan would have when he became eligible at the end of the fall semester in December.
Coming into the final two games of the regular season, Nwankwo is leading the Vikings in scoring averaging 11.8 points reaching double digits in 10 of his last 11 games and 11 of 13 and is second in rebounds at 5.05 per contest all this in just 17 games (making 15 starts at center). In addition, over the last 11 contests, Ije has averaged 13.5 points and 5.8 rebounds while shooting 50.5% from the field and 85.9% from the free-throw line.
In Horizon League play, Ije has flourished leading the Vikes in scoring at 12.4 per game and is second in rebounds at 5.4 per game and has been among the league leaders in both categories. In addition he is shooting 46.5% from the field (60x129) and 71.6% from the line (53x74) and has blocked 11 shots in 14 games also among the top 15 in those categories.
One recent statistic that has caught the eye of radio and television, reporters, and statisticians is a player's free-throw percentage in the last five minutes of a game. Here Ije is a perfect 17-for-17 (compared to the entire Vikings team shooting 68.9% this season).
Nwankwo played high school ball at Detroit Country Day, a perennial powerhouse in Michigan High School Basketball the same high school that sent Chris Webber to Michigan and Shane Battier to Duke and later to the NBA. As a senior, Nwankwo was named to the all-star first team averaging 18.5 points and 12 rebounds as the Yellow Jackets finished with a 21-3 record and reached the class B regional final.
Ije was one of the top forwards in all of Michigan and accepted a scholarship to Purdue where he played 27 games over two seasons in West Lafayette for head coach Gene Keady. In his freshman season of 2003-04 he played in 25 games, making three starts. His best game with the Boilermakers came on February 14,2004 when he scored seventeen points (going 13-for-14 from the free throw line) in a win over Indiana.
But when Keady decided that he would be stepping down as head coach of the Boilers and long time Keady assistant, and former Southern Illinois head coach Matt Painter, would take over, Nwankwo reached a crossroad in his career. After playing just two games in 2004-05 he transferred to Cleveland State enrolling in the Spring, 2005 semester.
The Horizon League, like other Division I mid-major conferences, accept players who would be sitting on the bench with the major powers and have blossomed. The most recent being UW-Milwaukee's Joah Tucker who came from Bradley, Detroit's Brandon Cotton who returned home from Michigan State, and the Vikings own Raheem Moss, who transferred from Bowling Green.
When he came to the North Coast, Ije watched and learned the system implemented by head coach Mike Garland and his staff. Even though he was ineligible to play, he participated in the practices and off-court training so he would be up to speed when he would become eligible in December, 2005. After sitting out the first seven games of the season, including the games at North Carolina and Michigan State, while he finished serving his NCAA transfer requirements.
Ije made his first appearance in Forest Green and White on December 20th against Utah Valley State at the Wolstein Center, scoring just four points in 13 minutes as the Vikings rallied to defeat the Wolverines in overtime ending a three-game losing streak.
After sitting out the John Carroll game due to the flu, he then to use a football term started moving up the depth chart as he scored 15 points (going 7-for-13 from the field) in a home loss to Loyola.
He broke the starting lineup on January 2nd at Wisconsin-Milwaukee and there he has been. Garland has used Ije both at forward and most recently at center.
He matched his CSU high of 15 in a January 12th home win over Detroit in overtime.
But it was not until the Akron game on January 16th where Ije really started to assert himself as one of the scorers on the team. His15 points and eight rebounds against the Zips (he was matched up against Romeo Travis one of the best forwards in the Mid-American Conference).
After the game with the Zips, the Vikings went the two-game road trip to UIC and Wisconsin-Green Bay in which the Vikings picked up victories ending long losing streaks to both the Flames (the first win in Chicago since Janaury,2002) and Phoenix (their first win ever at the Resch Center and first in Titletown since February,2001) Nwankwo averaged 16 points in those two games while shooting 50% from the field and 75% from the line with 11 rebounds, three steals, two blocked shots and two steads.
For that performance he was named Horizon League Player of the Week, the first for a Viking since Modibo Niakate last season and just the eighth player to garner the award since they joined the league in 1994-95.
Nwankwo set a career high in rebounds on January 25th in a home loss to Butler when he pulled down nine and set a career points mark on February 4th at Loyola when he scored 20 in the narrow loss to the Ramblers.
A couple of other parts of Ije's game which are overlooked is first his free throw shooting. Even though CSU has been at or near the bottom of that statistic for almost the entire season, Nwankwo has going 72.1% for the season (62x86) and his defense which was on display Saturday against Delaware in the BracketBusters game where he (along with J'Nathan Bullock and Patrick Tatham) held the Blue Hens Hardina Nana to just six points seven rebounds. Nana came into the game averaging 19.2 points and 11 rebounds one of four players in all of Division I to have average those numbers
Ije is the third of four children in the Nwankwo family and the second to play Division I basketball as his brother Ugo played two seasons at Ohio State.
Over the past few seasons, the Vikings have had players to come in via transfer and have had immediate success the most recent have been Moss who made the Horizon League newcomer team last season averaging 12.8 pts and 3,5 rebounds. Westley who led the Vikes in scoring 2003-04 and twice in rebounding and garnered places on the newcomer team in 04 and second team all-Horizon League in 2005, and Damon Stringer when he transferred from Ohio State in 1999-2000 who scored 573 points (the most by a CSU player at the time since Mouse McFadden 615 in 1987-88) enroute to being named Newcomer of the Year and a spot on the Horizon League first team. Nwankwo is keeping that lineage alive with his play this season and possibly could gain some votes for the all-newcomer team along with Bullock and junior guard Carlos English.
Ije will have one more season with the Vikings. Their recent two-game winning streak has them at 10 wins on the season (the first they reached double-digits in wins since 2001-02) has given the squad and the fans optimism inside the Wolstein Center for the final two regular-season games of this season and beyond
When you add Nwankwo to Bullock, English, Bahadaar Russell, and an improving Renard Fields to players like Patrick Tatham, Moss, and Victor Morris who will all be seniors. The Vikings could be one of the deepest teams in the Horizon League in 2006-07.
