Sometimes, hard work gets rewarded in the best of ways.
Senior guard Onyebuch Ezeakudo has been no stranger to hard work as he's been a depth player at Pitt who's now in his fourth season under Jeff Capel playing basketball for the Panthers. Ezeakudo earned his way onto the team as a walk-on during his freshman year at Pitt and has been part of the team since. As we reported earlier this week, Capel had been considering offering Ezeakudo a scholarship, but hadn't announced anything as of Monday.
That changed when Ezeakudo was called into Capel's office Thursday for a phone call that let him know, he was finally on scholarship:
Always great to 📞 home. Especially when you get to share great news.#H2P pic.twitter.com/NVEFb4TN3A
— Pitt Basketball (@Pitt_MBB) January 13, 2022
While Ezeakudo celebrated, his teammates were also proud of his accomplishment, as starting forward Mouhammadou Gueye described the scene when the Panthers congratulated him as a team.
"It was great," Gueye said Friday of seeing Ezeakudo learn he was on scholarship. "To see his reaction and the reaction from the team around him, it was great. He deserves it. He's one of the hardest working players on the team and he's a veteran leader. He embodies what it means to be a Pitt Panther."
Ezeakudo came to Pitt from his hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana, where several smaller schools were offering him scholarships to come play basketball at lower levels. But that's not what the 6-foot-1 guard wanted for himself, as he saw the chance to play ACC basketball and pursue his dream of studying bioengineering at Pitt.
"I had a lot of offers from Division III schools and other small schools," Ezeakudo said Friday. "It was definitely a lot on the lower level side and a lot of smaller schools in the Midwest are and around Fort Wayne, Idiana. It was difficult. I think back to conversations I had at that time and when it was close, I had a conversation with a coach who wanted me to come to his school. I told him I would decline and try to walk-on at Pitt. He told me it would be a big mistake to do that and things wouldn't work out at Pitt. It was hard at the time not knowing what would happen, but I knew if I worked hard that everything would work out."
That defiance to the idea he wouldn't make it at Pitt wasn't met with immediate success with the program. He was scouted by a Pitt coach and wasn't promised much, but Ezeakudo still wanted to see through his mission to play Division I basketball anyway he could.
"My first contact back in high school was with coach (Tim) O'Toole," Ezeakudo recalled. "At the time he didn't know if there would be a walk-on tryout here, so he took my number and said he would let me know. That year, I decided to start out as a practice player for the girls team to get closer to the program. Even if I didn't get on the team freshman year, I was going to keep trying," Ezeakudo explained. "I knew I wouldn't take no for an answer. Once I made that decision I knew I would do anything I could to make it happen. Sometime in September I got an e-mail saying there would be a walk-on tryout, and that was it. I went to the tryout, it went well, and then a couple weeks later coach O'Toole said I was on the team. At the time it was just as a practice player, so I tried to help anyway I could. It was over winter break that I went home and they called and said they needed me to come back. Then I was fully added to the team."
Once Ezeakudo made the roster, he didn't take it as a time to celebrate. Instead, he approached it as just being another step in his journey to finding a way to help Pitt basketball win games.
"I always had a goal to get on scholarship," Ezeakudo said. "But my biggest goal was to just be a contributor to the team. Once I get to a goal, I always wonder what's next and it and I don't really get to enjoy (an accomplishment). Every step I thought, 'how can I get on the team?' 'How can I get in the game?' 'How can I play bigger minutes?' But my goal was to help the team however I can. As for the scholarship, I kept working and didn't think much about it. People would ask me about it and I would always say I wasn't worried about it. I just wanted to work everyday."
That relentless work of showing up everyday, working hard and pushing himself ended up pushing his teammates in practices even when they were the ones on scholarship and getting most of the coaching staff's attention. But that motivated his teammates and even Gueye, who joined Pitt this season as a transfer, quickly grew to admire Ezeakudo's work ethic and passion to contribute to the team.
"It's funny because even though it's my first year at Pitt, I know about him because my best friend walked on with him," Gueye said of Ezeakudo. "He worked just as hard and I see my best friend in O (Ezeakudo). They both work hard, sacrifice to make plays and give everything he has to the program. He pushes us on the court, huddles us together when we need it, and impacts everyone on the floor. He does everything. He makes hustle plays. He's always worried about how he can help in any way he can. He'll just have three points or two steals, but he doesn't care about stats. He just wants to contribute every way he can. Even if it's just going out and facilitating at point guard, disrupting the other team's point guard, sacrificing his body, he'll do anything needed to help us."
Make no mistake, Ezeakudo's journey to being on scholarship for Pitt basketball was a bumpy road. Over four years of practicing with the program, he's had plenty of nights with little sleep and worked hard to maintain success in the classroom as well.
"I would definitely say that it's tough," Ezeakudo said about walk-ons. "It's not easy. The biggest words that come to mind is being mentally tough. You'll work as hard as everybody else and not get any recognition. Especially for someone in my case who was working to get a bigger role on the team and then you see it's not going to happen. There's a lot of times it would've been easy to say, 'forget it,' and just go finish out my college years. It's easy to say, 'be tough, keep going' when you're a freshman, but when you get to year three, you get tired of it. But you keep being mentally tough to keep coming in every single day with the same mindset. And there's still the school part of it. I would have an exam before or after practice after only sleeping for a couple hours, but I'm still expected to come in every day."
Ezeakudo has seen an increased role this year where his hard work has come to make him a reliable depth player for the Panthers after the team lost Nike Sibande to injury and Ithiel Horton's suspension scenario began, leaving the Panthers with few available guards. After averaging only five minutes per game last season with only 11 points scored, Ezeakudo has become a more important player for the team who averages 16.9 minutes per game and has scored 30 points for the Panthers this season.
Now he's an important player coming off the bench for the Panthers to give Jamarius Burton and Femi Odukale rest while applying the intensity that got him on scholarship to defending opposing guards and facilitating Pitt's offense for important minutes during the middle of games. When asked if he would use the NCAA COVID-19 waiver when it comes to eligibility for next season, Ezeakudo seemed undecided as he has plans to attend med school soon.
"I'm not sure yet," Ezeakudo said about playing another year. "It's a possibility, but medical school is something else on my list at some point. But it's something I'll put some thought into in the next couple months. I really like orthopedic surgery because I'll work with muscles and bones. That'll be part of the route I take."
• Gueye also discussed Pitt's upcoming rematch with Louisville 4 p.m. Saturday at the Petersen Events Center, and what might be different from the Panthers' 75-72 loss they suffered on the road to the Cardinals on Jan. 5.
"The biggest thing we learned about was our personnel," Gueye said about the Louisville loss. "We had a game plan and we followed it well in the first half. But in the second half we missed a few assignments and that had them on their runs. That's what we've focused on the last few practices. We're focusing on taking those mistakes and going into this one showing we've grown from them so we can come out this weekend with a win."
Pitt's 77-61 loss to Syracuse Tuesday was the first ACC loss by the Panthers that wasn't decided by a single possession. After being so close to defeating the Cardinals a week and a half ago, Pitt looks to show the growth from its young basketball team and turn some of their close losses into close wins.
• Friday evening, the ACC announced it had rescheduled the previously postponed matchup between Pitt and Virginia Tech in Blackburg, Va.. The game that was originally scheduled to play on New Year's Day was announced to be moved to Monday, Feb. 7:
Pitt’s game at Virginia Tech has been rescheduled.
— Pitt Basketball (@Pitt_MBB) January 14, 2022
📆 2.7
🕖 7 PM
📺 @accnetwork
🔗 https://t.co/ArvgWPk3Cp pic.twitter.com/A2AeygY0EF
The new date sets up a home-and-home series of games between the Panthers and Hokies, as they are currently scheduled to play each other at the Petersen Events Center just two days prior on Saturday, Feb. 5.