It was media day at McArthur Court Tuesday.
The press circled Malik Hairston and stuck out their recorders. A photographer shot Tajuan Porter standing in the same spot and stance for at least five minutes. A reporter asked Maarty Leunen if the team would be okay without Aaron Brooks. A video camera recorded Bryce Taylor talking.
Everyone else – the backups and freshman and walk-ons – sat around, joked and waited on the sidelines, an attempt to make the split atmosphere a little less awkward.
That’s why, at first, you couldn’t hear Churchill Odia.
The 6-foot-6 junior swingman’s response came out a near whisper when asked what his role on the team would be this year.
“My position is the point,” Odia said, his response hushed and wavering. “If (coach Ernie Kent) takes me to the forward, then I can still do that. I am a team player.”
Odia, who transferred from Xavier after his freshman year, is limited to a hope that he’ll make an impact this season. He’s got competition at every position he could fill. He has pain in his left knee – after surgeries to repair a torn meniscus, doctors told him he would have to get used to the discomfort.
And he’s got some resentment, though Odia said he doesn’t dwell on it.
“I listened to the wrong people,” Odia said.
Odia, who was born in Lagos, Nigeria, moved to the United States as a teenager to play basketball at Montrose Christian High School in Maryland.
Thad Matta, who coached at Xavier for three seasons, loved Odia, so much so that he and his people followed him around everywhere in high school, eventually convincing Odia to become a Musketeer. But then Matta, who had recruited Odia to come and play for a Xavier team fresh off an Elite Eight appearance in 2004, sprang for a more lucrative job at Ohio State just a month before the young man landed in Cincinnati.
“I listened to the wrong people,” the 21-year-old repeated.
But Odia also has a dream, one born from the nightmare that is life in the worst areas of his homeland.
Odia will graduate this winter with a degree in political science. He believes that what he’s learned in Eugene will help him do things in Nigeria – a country Odia said is riddled with poor governance and internal strife – that far transcends anything he’ll ever do on the hardwood.
“Once I’m done with my basketball career I want to go back home and become a politician,” Odia said. “I think I can do something positive for my country.”
There are things people just don’t know about his country, about third world countries, Odia said.
“There is a lot of corruption in the government,” Odia said. “There is a lot of poverty. The gap between the poor and rich is too big.”
But Odia, who could just as easily live a comfortable life in the U.S. once he’s done pursuing his goal to play a few years of pro ball, can’t turn on his back to the problems that now seem as transparent as ever.
“Nigeria is my country, and I can’t run away from that,” said Odia, who played for the Nigerian national team this summer. “Even when I’m finished playing, I am still gonna go back home and do something positive for my country.”
What can Odia do? He wants to tighten the gap between the poor and rich, figure out ways to spread out the money the country makes as one of the major non-Middle Eastern oil producers.
He wants democracy; something that he said obviously will never be perfect, but that can easily be improved in Nigeria.
“We preach democracy down there, but we practice differently,” Odia said.
He wants kids to have books, because he knows just how eager they’d be to learn and go to school.
“Let’s put those kids in this situation and see how big of a difference it makes. If you give them little things, a good education and provide them with the little things, they will put everything they have into it.”
Doing whatever he can to make a difference – Odia’s voice grows to its strongest when he talks about that.
“We can’t change everything,” Odia said. “There is no way I can go back and change everything, but if I can do little things – that would be good.”
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