Tom Archdeacon: Stirring a basketball melting pot at Miami

The hoop dreams of these Miami RedHawks started a lot of different ways in a lot of different places.

Dion Wade’s dad, Butch, starred at Michigan in the mid-1980s, was drafted by the New York Knicks and went on to play professionally for 14 years in Belgium. That’s where Dion grew up — in Antwerp — and where his dad and his mom, who is from Morocco, got him a basketball hoop for his first birthday.

“It was a little kid’s rim with Michael Jordan on (the backboard),” he said. “And I used a little plastic ball.”

Ben Eke Kazee said his mother was trying to keep him off the streets growing up in Asaba, Nigeria:

“She went by a stadium and saw them playing a game,” he said with a smile. “She came home and said ‘I think you should try that net ball.’

“She didn’t know the name of it, so I went over and said, ‘Mom, it’s basketball’ and I started playing.”

Milos Jovic, who’s from Leskovac, Serbia, said: “Basketball runs through my family’s blood.

“From the stories of a long time ago, I know my granddad was one of the best players in Serbia. And my dad is coaching right now in China.

“In my backyard we had a big basketball court. That’s where I started to play with my dad and all the kids from the neighborhood came over and played.”

Growing up in Niamey, Niger, Abdoulaye Harouna said he was influenced by his aunt:

“She was very good. She played for our national team. She always had a basketball around the house and I picked it up.

“My first real idol was Allen Iverson. I’m 6-5 now, but back then I was a small guy and he was small and he dominated in the NBA.”

For Jiaying Wang, who played high school basketball in Beijing, China, his love of the game began with Yao Ming:

“I was 7 or 8 when he was drafted by Houston with the first pick. And even now that Yao retired, I’m still a big Houston fan.

“I met Yao once in Beijing. He is reaaally tall!”

Though they have come from all parts of the world, these RedHawks’ lifelong embrace of the game has come with one full-court credo, said Harouna:

“Follow the ball. I’ve followed it and it has taken me everywhere.”

For Harouna that’s meant coming as a young teen from his African nation to Dallas for adidas Nation camps and then AAU trips to Las Vegas. It’s meant pursuing basketball as a youngster for a year in Mali, then two years of prep school — one in Connecticut, one in Florida — before playing junior college basketball at the College of Southern Idaho.

For others it’s meant prep schools at other places across the United States. For Jovic, it was a basketball academy in Prague, Czech Republic, while for Wade, after honing his skills at national powerhouse Findlay Prep just outside Las Vegas, it was a season at Auburn.

And now, following the ball has landed all of them at the most unlikely of destinations:

Oxford, Ohio.

Home of the Miami basketball program run by coach John Cooper.

This season’s team is especially exotic and Precious.

That would be Precious Ayah, the 19-year-old, 6-foot-6 freshman from Okhoama, Nigeria:

“I got my name from my mother,” he laughed. “Precious is really my middle name, but it’s easier to remember. My first name is Otonworio, but I’ve always gone as Precious. Even back home.”

And home for this team spans the globe.

Besides eight players from the United States, Miami has guys from seven nations and four continents.

The foreign-born RedHawks are from Croatia, Serbia, Belgium, Niger and Nigeria. And Wang, the senior manager, is from China.

Wade and Harouna played for Miami last season. Four of the foreign players are freshmen.

But the far reaches of the RedHawks roster are not the anomaly you might think.

Davidson has players from seven nations this season. St. Mary’s, which beat the Dayton Flyers at UD Arena, has seven Australians. Fordham has seven foreign players, too. Gonzaga has five, Louisville four.

According to a study by the Rukkus blog, 11 percent of the players on NCAA Division I rosters are foreign-born. All 32 conference have at least five foreign-born players and the Atlantic 10 has the most at 33.

The players said they came to Miami for a variety of reasons. There was the opportunity to play — last year’s team had eight seniors — and the trust and comfort they felt with Cooper and his staff. And several mentioned the chance to get a Miami education.

“To get a degree from here — this is a very good school,” said Bruno Solomun, whose parents are in Croatia’s ministry of foreign affairs — his mother is stationed at the Croatian embassy in Washington, D.C. — and that’s meant spending as much of his childhood living in France, Belgium and Portugal as his hometown Zagreb.

Several of the foreign players talked as much about their studies as they did their hoops this week.

The 6-foot-8 Eke Kazee said he’s studying kinesiology and “in five years I should be a registered nurse.”

And then there’s Ayab, who is sidelined with a torn ACL but is healthy in the classroom. A 4.0 student at Greenforest McCalep Christian Academy in Decatur, Georgia last season, he just finished his first college grading period with a 3.8 grade-point average.

“One B,” he said shaking his head as if he’d just clanked a free throw.

“He was disappointed he didn’t get a 4.0,” Cooper said. “He works his butt off on the court and he does the same with his classwork. They’re required to spend 10 hours a week in study hall. He’ll have like 18.

“Academics mean something to these kids. They come here to play ball and get education. They’re away from their families — some haven’t been home in four or five years — and they don’t waver. They want to make their families proud.

“I have the utmost respect for these kids.”

‘Such an array’

After he came out of Wichita State, Cooper played a season of pro ball in Holland so he knows what it’s like to play far from home and how much talent there is overseas.

As for building a team, he’s just trying to revive a program that hasn’t had a winning season in seven years and is 8-9 with the 74-70 loss to Mid-American Conference East Division leader Akron on Saturday at Millett Hall.

“We’re just trying to scour and find players like everybody else,” he said. “It kind of just worked out like this that we ended up with such an array.”

Some players — like Harouna, who had 12 points against Akron — he landed from longtime basketball contacts. Others he or his staff saw in action.

Jovic — who played at the Get Better Academy in Prague last season, a program that has alumni playing at Fordham, LaSalle, Boston College and numerous other schools — was spotted at a tournament last year in Rhode Island.

Eke Kazee played a prep season in Charlotte, North Carolina, then moved with his host family to Logan, West Virginia, where he played at Logan High.

Sounding a little like John Denver, he gushed: “Oh I love West Virginia. The country, the horses, the cold, the quiet.”

Cooper also goes overseas. Last summer it was Dakar, Senegal, where he took part in camps to nurture talent while also keeping an eye open for prospective players.

For their part, the players have to be willing to sacrifice and move away from their comfort zone.

“When you grow up in Africa, you take on responsibility before some kids here in the States do,” Eke Kazee said.

“When you’re 12, your parents might say, ‘You’re grown now and can work and make money to care for yourself.’ I did little things to help out. I did construction and helped neighbors and made a little money.”

That early dose of independence helps later when a player leaves home and comes to America.

Precious Ayah said he hasn’t seen his family since 2012.

For Eke Kazee, it’s been three years. He left home just after his mother died of breast cancer.

“If she were still alive I might not be here,” he said. “I would not have been able to leave her. I miss her.”

If looking back can be painful, looking ahead can be challenging.

After graduating from Forsyth Country Day in Lewisville, North Carolina, where he averaged 18 points and 8 rebounds last season, the 6-foot-9 Solomun said he had offers from 15 Division I schools including St. Bonaventure, George Mason, Richmond, UNC-Greensboro and UNC-Charlotte.

When he tore his ACL following a freshman season at Auburn and decided to transfer, Wade, who had nine points Saturday, said he got offers from places like Cleveland State, Iona and Northern Arizona.

“But then Coach (Sheldon) Everett came to recruit me and I felt comfortable. I felt a bond,” he said. “Then I met Coach Cooper and it really felt like a family atmosphere. They were people who cared about you.

“And finally I visited the campus and that was it.

“I was completely sold.”

Tough adjustment

“I’ve learned a lot of new words out here,” Cooper said with a grin the other day as he sat just off the court of the Sub Gym at Millett Hall. “Some of those words have been good, some bad.”

You could hear up to a dozen languages at Miami practices. Each of the players is multi-lingual. Wade speaks French, English, Dutch and Arabic. Harouna speaks two of Niger’s national languages, Hausa and Zarma, along with English and French.

While all the players speak good English, adjusting to the U.S wasn’t easy.

Ayah came here when he was 14 and said the only thing he knew about America was from some TV shows he’d seen, some of the music and one of his favorite movies, “Stomp the Yard,” the 2007 step-dancing drama of Greek life at a fictional black college.

Jiayjng Wang came to Miami to study sports management after graduating from high school in Beijing. A friend, knowing his love of basketball, talked to Cooper about adding him as a manager, a job he’s now had four years.

“The coaches and the players have no idea how to pronounce my name, so they just say the first letter,” he grinned. “I’m J.”

The players say they lean on each other as they adjust. Along with family and friends, many also miss the food of home.

Eke Kazee longs for egusi soup made with melon vegetables and meat.

Harouna said he’s learned to cook: “I usually make whatever I feel like from home. Even though it’s different from how your mom makes it, it gives me a taste of home.”

Although Harouna wasn’t able to get home when his father died awhile back, he finally visited Niger this summer for the first time in three years: “People said, ‘Oh you are growing up. You have a little beard and moustache!’ ”

Solomun’s parents came to a game at Millett Hall this year and Wang’s mom — in Iowa on business — came over for a game in December. Wade’s dad, who now lives and coaches in Sarasota, caught the RedHawks game at Central Florida.

The players said their families are able to keep up through social media and live streaming on the Internet.

While each of the players said he hoped to go on to a pro career, several also spoke of using their education to find a good job.

“America is the big dream,” said Eke Kazee. “Back home the coaches say, ‘You can be anything in that country. All you’ve got to do is work hard and be dedicated.’

“And when I came here I realized that is true. You can be anything if you do the right thing.

“This is the land of opportunity.”

New traditions

“We had an early morning practice on Thanksgiving and before we started Coach Cooper said, ‘Hey J come here,’ ” said Wang. “He was like, ‘If you don’t have anything to do tonight, you are more than welcome to come to my home. My family is inviting you. We’ll have a big dinner for you.’

“I said, ‘Oh, of course. That’s pretty cool.’

“And it was. There was like 30 people: the coaches and their families and the players who weren’t able to go back home.”

Cooper said it has become tradition:

“Some players go with their teammates, but if they don’t, I tell them to come to the Cooper house. I love it. It’s a lot of fun. They get away from just seeing you as a coach and they see the wife and kids, the whole family. It’s relaxing.”

While Wade joined his dad in Sarasota and Eke Kazee said he went to his girlfriend’s house, the other foreign team members came to Cooper’s home.

Solomun said the first time he experienced Thanksgiving was last year with the host family he lived with in North Carolina:

“In Croatia and everywhere else in the world, it’s not a day like that. It’s an American thing. It’s pretty nice.”

Cooper said his wife, Melissa, and Letita Duckett, the wife of associate head coach Rick Duckett, “cook for three days. It’s a big thing.

“We had chicken, ham, the whole soul food thing, collard greens, mac ‘n cheese, dressing, casseroles. We fried a couple of turkeys. You name it, we had it.”

Wang teased: “I wish I had chopsticks!”

He and the other guys got something better, though.

“They know Mama Coop and Mama Duckett are always on their side,” Cooper said. “They’re not on the coaches’ side. They love these kids.”

The players sense that and that’s why Jovic has the perfect answer for buddies back in Serbia who aren’t sure just where he is:

“I say, ‘It’s not Miami, Florida, but it’s Oxford. And that’s good.

“It’s very good.”

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