Thursday put an appropriate cap to Zuby Ejiofor’s memorable St. John’s career and his fantastic senior season.
Less than a month after he led the Johnnies to their first Sweet 16 berth in 27 years, and a few weeks after he was named the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar award winner as the top center in the country, he received another major honor.
Ejiofor won the Haggerty Award, given to the top player in the area by the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association. That will go in his expanding trophy case, along with his Big East Player of the Year and Big East Tournament Most Outstanding Player honors. He becomes the second Johnnie in as many years to win the Haggerty, after RJ Luis took home the award a year ago.
“It’s a true blessing and a true honor, obviously, to win the award,” the 6-foot-9 Ejiofor said. “You know, I had one heck of a year. I don’t really want to go into all accolades and stuff, but it was never really about me. It was more so a testament to my teammates, the coaching staff and the amount of belief that they had [in] me throughout the entire season. So, it goes to them.”
Ejiofor has been in Las Vegas since the season ended training for the NBA draft, working out at Impact Basketball under the guidance of NBA trainer Joe Abunassar. It is a loaded draft that some experts believe is the deepest in quite a long time. In a normal year, Ejiofor might be a guaranteed first-round pick. It is more uncertain this year, the big man projected to go anywhere from late in the first round to early in the second.
He’ll have plenty of opportunities to prove himself, starting at the NBA Draft Combine in Chicago from May 10-17. After that, he will take part in workouts with individual teams.
“I’m truly motivated, excited. I feel like I still got a lot to prove to myself, to a lot of people out there,” he said. “… Just be ready for the moment whenever I get the opportunity to show people what I got. I feel like I’m going to be more than ready to do that.”
Ejiofor has come a long way from the kid who was a lightly used reserve as a freshman at Kansas, and was a backup in his first season at St. John’s. He became the linchpin to back-to-back 30-win seasons in Queens, arguably the best Johnnie this century and now is projected to be the first Red Storm player drafted since Sir’Dominic Pointer was selected in the second round (53rd overall) in 2015 by the Cavaliers.
“Anybody just prays for an opportunity,” Ejiofor said. “There’s thousands of players just trying to make a squad. So it will be just a true blessing to hear my name called on draft night. I don’t really care where it is.”
It is just under a month since Ejiofor’s last game, the heartbreaking five-point loss to Duke in the Sweet 16. It took him until the entire tournament was over to get over it. This past weekend, Pitino hosted the entire senior class for a weekend in Miami, a chance for them all to say goodbye and reminisce about the memorable year.
“It meant everything, honestly,” Ejiofor said. “And I was telling [Pitino], I think that’s probably like one of my favorite weekends of my entire life. … I don’t know if I’m going to get to experience hanging out with those guys again. You have a little history with what we went through this past season, and then it’s like a going-away party.”
