Nigeria Content Online

Charles Okwandu has
won an NCAA winners medal after his team, the University of Connecticut
Huskies defeated the Butler Bulldogs in the final of this year’s NCAA
National Men’s Division One Championship.

The match which
came up on Monday night (early hours of Tuesday morning in Nigeria) at
the Reliant Stadium, in Houston, Texas, saw the Huskies running out
with a 53-41 victory. It is their NCCA title in 12 years.

It was a game of
contrasting fortunes, that saw the presence of the 7-feet-tall Okwandu,
who featured for 13 minutes and finished the game with two points,
along with five rebounds, four of which were offensive rebounds, after
the Bulldogs over and over again failed in their bid to box him out of
the paint.

The former Dodan
Warriors of Lagos player, also finished with a block and with his
success with the Huskies, becomes the first player from the Nigerian
Premier Basketball League to win an NCAA Championship ring.

Okwandu, was
discovered by Dodan Warriors president, Sam Ahmedu, a retired Army
colonel, and the late basketball coach, Emmanuel Chagu in Satellite
Town, a suburb of Lagos, from where he was drafted as a tall skinny
high school prospect.

He participated in
the Radar Hoops/Nestle Milo Top 50 Camp and the NBA-organized
Basketball Without Borders Camp in South Africa and then played for the
Lagos-based Warriors in the Premier Basketball League in 2005.

Thereafter, he
featured for the Warriors in the finals of the 2006 African Champions
Cup for Men hosted in Lagos where the Warriors finished in third place.

And Ahmedu can’t but heap accolades on the 25-year-old and his team for winning the 2011 title.

“We give glory to
God that the shy, skinny kid of yesterday has grown up to be a man
influencing an event of such magnitude on the world stage,” said Ahmedu.

“The entire Dodan
Warriors programme, and I believe all well-meaning basketball lovers in
Nigeria and beyond, are proud of this remarkable achievement which has
never been attained by any player from the Nigerian league.

He added: “This is
an indication that the Nigerian league will produce world beaters any
day, if properly harnessed and managed.”

Okwandu wasn’t
however the only Nigerian player in the Huskies line-up, as they also
paraded Alex Oriakhi who, although born in the United States, has
Nigerian parents.

The 20-year-old Oriakhi featured for 25 minutes and finished the game with 11 points and 11 rebounds.

“We’ve been down that road before throughout the whole tournament,”
Oriakhi said in a statement posted on his school’s website. “We just
keep playing basketball and we stick together, and I think that’s
what’s most important.”