Quiet but steady

Ask Patrick Ekeruo, junior center for the men's basketball team, where he would like to see his game progress, and you might think, at first, that he is selling himself short.

You'll hear no aspirations to be like former teammate Judson Wallace '05, who graduated last year as a three-time all-Ivy honoree at center and a member of Princeton's elite 1,000-point club.

There certainly won't be any mention of Hakeem Olajuwon, the two-time NBA champion and 12-time all-star who, like Ekeruo (pronounced e-CARE-oh), hails from Nigeria.

Instead, you can expect a response befitting Ekeruo's grounded nature and his desire to apply himself in whatever way he sees as best for his team.

"I need to become what Mike Stephens was in the post last year," Ekeruo says, referring to Wallace's classmate and backup, who emerged last year as a stabilizing presence for the Tigers during an otherwise turbulent senior season.

"I just want to be that center [about whom] everyone can say, 'He has no turnovers, he gets his teammates shots, and he controls the offense,'" Ekeruo says. "It'd be nice to score a lot of points, but I know that's not going to happen."

Look at it that way, and Ekeruo's ambition seems flawless. As the primary backup to sophomore center Harrison Schaen — a purer scorer with less experience running the Princeton offense — it would serve Ekeruo well to be able to provide the same change of pace that Stephens did, slowing things down offensively, while providing hustle and grit on the other end.

"[Ekeruo's] greatest strength is that he works extremely hard to do exactly what the team needs," head coach Joe Scott '87 says. "He doesn't have a personal agenda, so when he's on the court, he provides a certain stability."

In the Tigers' 64-54 win over Lehigh on Nov. 20 — their only victory of the young season — Ekeruo's positive impact was undeniable. With Schaen in foul trouble, Ekeruo showed Scott his appreciation for the 21 minutes of floor time he was given, posting a career-high nine points and sparking Princeton out of a brief offensive funk early in the game.

"That was the first time I've felt like my team needed me," Ekeruo says of the Lehigh game. "It wasn't like we were up 20 points and they were throwing me in there just to get some token minutes."

In other words, it was little like Ekeruo's Tiger career up to that point. On the contrary, the Lehigh game was a sort of mini-culmination of all the hours of toil Ekeruo has dedicated over the years in order to reach a point where he could really help his teammates.

After a freshman season in which he appeared in 10 blowout wins primarily as a forward, Ekeruo was hampered last season by both a knee injury suffered while lifting weights and the difficulties of adapting to his new role as a center. As a result, he appeared in only three games during his sophomore year, without so much as attempting a field goal.

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"Anybody on the basketball team will tell you, you go through a lot of tough times," Ekeruo says, referring specifically to those players on the "white" team, which is composed of reserves who battle the starting unit in practice. "You can get lost in the monotony of it. I didn't want to get to college and just get lost and have that be my college career."

So, instead, Ekeruo vowed to bring out the best in himself for the sake of the team, adopting a work ethic that has not escaped the notice of his coach.

"[Ekeruo] made a decision last year to come out and work extremely hard," Scott says. "When he committed himself, there were no guarantees he was going to play, that he was going to see the fruits of his labor."

Anyone familiar with Ekeruo's journey away from the basketball court, however, would have been loath to bet against him. Born in the Nigerian town of Owerri, Ekeruo moved to the United States with his mother at age six, speaking only broken English. By the time he graduated from Moreau Catholic High School in Hayward, Calif., he was salutatorian of his class.

Today, Ekeruo is a Woodrow Wilson School concentrator, helping his junior task force analyze unconventional change agents in conflict-prone Pakistan. He could not be more suited for the role.

"Working in a task force is that whole team environment," Ekeruo says. "We do our independent research and do our own specific thing, but, in the end, we put it all together."

With the Tigers in the midst of one of the more turbulent eras in their history, Ekeruo's quiet but steady presence might be just the unconventional agent Princeton needs to bring about some change of its own.