Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Big Man High

Some afternoons, Aris Williams would pick up Roy Hibbert, and the two Georgetown Preparatory School big men would drive to McDonough Gymnasium to play pickup ball against Hoya greats like Patrick Ewing, Dikembe Mutombo and Alonzo Mourning. Other days, they’d just go to the mall and afterwards, Hibbert would sleep over at Williams’ house. Along with 6-foot-9 Davis Nwankwo, the 7-foot-2 Hibbert and 6-foot-9 Williams formed both one of the most formidable high school frontlines in the Washington area and a friendship that has remained strong to this day, even as each of the triple towers has taken a considerably different route to, and through, Division I college basketball. “We were one big family,” Hibbert says. Hibbert’s journey from high school project to college All-American is, at this point, well-documented both on the Hilltop and around the country. But, Nwankwo, who chose to attend Vanderbilt but can no longer play for health reasons, and Williams, who initially attended Valparaiso, transferred to South Florida and now deals with injury issues of his own, have remained largely unknown. ANDY LUTHER, now the head coach at the Landon School in Bethesda, Md., and an assistant coach there in 2003-2004, remembers watching one of his players try to box out Hibbert on a free-throw attempt. The Landon player’s head only came up to Hibbert’s biceps. “It was like nothing anybody in the D.C. area has ever had to deal with,” Luther said. “That was the biggest team since John Thompson [Jr.]’s high school team at Archbishop Carroll.” With their size, any one of the trio could have played in the paint, but surprisingly, all three were not natural centers. Georgetown Prep coach and former Georgetown guard Dwayne Bryant (CAS ’90) says that that made coaching Hibbert, Williams and Nwankwo nothing out of the ordinary. “Aris actually played the two or three, he was very skilled at 6-foot-9. He could shoot the ball, handle the ball,” Bryant recalls. “Davis was very athletic, he could handle the ball. He actually played point guard in grade school. He had very good range up to about 16 feet, so, at times, we could have both of the guys out on the wing.” Believe it or not, Hibbert, Williams and Nwankwo were not the only Divison I athletes that played on the Georgetown Prep hoops team. The guards on Bryant’s squad were impressive in their own right. One was Rice Moss, a cousin of Randy Moss, who, despite fielding several offers to play college basketball, chose to attend Syracuse and be a wide receiver. As a senior at ‘Cuse, Moss caught 13 balls for 150 yards. The other guard was Dan Gladding, a year behind Hibbert and company, who went on to play lacrosse at Virginia. He was named the ACC rookie of the year in 2006, a season in which the Cavaliers won a national championship. Gladding also had offers to play Division I basketball, Bryant said. “They were very good distributors,” Nwankwo says of Moss and Gladding. “They made all three of us happy. . They could score too, and they could guard. All in all, we had good chemistry.” Combine the athletic backcourt with the imposing frontcourt, and you get quite the memorable high school team. “Teams really didn’t get any offensive rebounds on us,” Hibbert says. “We killed them on the boards practically every game, and it was always fun because we used to throw lobs, dunk a lot and everything like that, so it was a lot of fun.” The big front line did create a problem, however. Who gets the ball? “We had to share touches,” Nwankwo says. “Usually when there’s one guy over 6-foot-9, that’s good. We had all three needed touches. [We usually got] 10 touches at most. Back then Roy was our focus, so he got the most touches. We learned to get beyond that. All we cared about was wins.” And win they did. As seniors, the team, which Bryant calls the most talented he’s ever coached, lost just four times. Bryant can still remember each one. There was a loss to basketball factory Oak Hill. There was a team from Oregon with Maarty Leunen, who now starts at forward for the Ducks, that beat the little Hoyas. Arinze Onuaku, now a center at Syracuse, got the better of Prep with Episcopal High School. So did St. Albans, but Hibbert was out with an injury for that one. Says Luther: “The only teams that could deal with Roy were Bullis, Episcopal had Arinze [Onuaku] – they had some great games their senior years together – and then St. Albans their final year in the IAC, they rode the backs of an awesome performance from a player named Manny Quezada,” who now plays for the University of San Francisco. “You can’t help but be intimidated,” Luther added. “No college in the D.C. area had 6-9, 6-9, 7-2 so you can’t help but be scared if you are bringing 6-1, 6-3, 6-3. But you just have to tell your team you gotta be physical with them. . It was a pretty tough couple years for us, for everybody.” That season, Hibbert averaged 19 points, 17 rebounds, six blocks and three assists en route to being named a second-team Washington Post All-Met. Luther remembers Hibbert not only as a tremendous basketball player, but also as a class act. Hibbert, he said, was the first one on either bench to applaud one evening when a Landon player scored his 1,000th career point. Later in that same game, a Landon administrator suffered a mild stroke, and as he was taken out of the gym, Luther said Hibbert was again the first person to stand up in respect. “Roy just showed great class,” Luther said. SOMETIMES, PRACTICE was more important – and more competitive – than games. It was in practice that Hibbert, Nwankwo and Williams actually had the opportunity to compete against players their own size. “Going against each other in practice, we got better,” Nwankwo says. “We had great one-on-one battles. It could go rebounding battle, it could go a skill matchup, one-on-one battle. Roy was so big – you had to jump to score over him. It made you think twice going in there.” Practice wasn’t always at Prep. Sometimes it took place at McDonough Gymnasium – and it wasn’t high school guys they were playing with. Thanks to Bryant’s connections to the school, all three big men would practice on the Hilltop with Hoyas past and present. Hibbert still remembers playing a two-on-two game one afternoon with Patrick Ewing, Patrick Ewing Jr. and Williams. “We played with Dikembe, Patrick Ewing,” Nwankwo says. “We were two young guys playing with college guys [and pros]. It gave us higher competition instead of high school teammates every day.” Off the court, the big three forged a close friendship. When they were not playing basketball, they went to the mall, or more likely, played video games – basketball video games, of course – at someone’s house. Asked last week who was the best video game player, Nwankwo couldn’t lie. “I’d have to say it’s me,” he said. “Honestly, maybe one game, they’ll kick my ass and the next game, I’ll kick their behind. There wasn’t really someone who dominated.” Could Nwankwo really get the better of Hibbert? “Naw, he couldn’t do that,” Hibbert said with a laugh. “I used to kill everyone at video games.” Hibbert and Williams were especially close. “Big Roy” and “Aristotle” would room together when the team traveled. “Aris is like a brother of mine,” Hibbert said. “One time, he pulled a prank on me, so I threw a chair at him, you know and it broke one of the doors in the hotel, so we had to pay for the hotel door.” Hibbert would not say what exactly the prank was – “Let’s just say it hurt,” he says. Numerous requests for an interview with Williams went unanswered. WITH ALL three forwards looking to play in college, recruiting could have strained the friendship. There are only so many Division I scholarships to go around, and it would have been easy for Hibbert, Nwankwo and Williams to look at each other as the competition. But that never happened. “I don’t think they were competing against each other,” Bryant says. “Davis was more of your power forward – I liked to compare him to Chris Webber. Roy was a pure center, and Aris was kind of a three/four. So they weren’t necessarily fighting for the same scholarship or recognition.” Hibbert committed to Georgetown as a sophomore. He said he tried to convince Nwankwo to join him on the Hilltop, but Nwankwo ultimately chose Vanderbilt over Virginia, Arizona and Georgia Tech. “All of us were equally highly recruited,” Nwankwo says. “All of us got attention, and all of us cared about each other. We cared where we went, and we cared that the others had a clear mind about where to go to college. We just cared about if we were happy with our decision.” Williams decided to go west to Valparaiso in Indiana. Playing apart for the first time in years, college began slowly for all three. Hibbert struggled in the more athletic college game and played just 15.8 minutes a game as a freshman. Williams appeared in 22 games, averaging 1.5 points, and Nwankwo redshirted with a broken left foot and separated right shoulder. The next season, Hibbert started to flourish but was still far from a finished product, Nwankwo logged eight minutes a night and Williams sat out the season after deciding to transfer to South Florida. In Vanderbilt’s 68-61 win over the Hoyas on Nov. 26, 2005, Nwankwo played three minutes without scoring, while Hibbert tallied six points in 13 minutes. None of the adversity that any of three faced on the court, however, compared to what Nwankwo was forced to deal with just days before the opening round of the 2006 Southeastern Conference tournament. Fifteen minutes into practice on Mon., March 6, 2006, Nwankwo fell to the ground unconscious. His heart had stopped. Vanderbilt’s athletic trainer, Mike Meyer, used an automated external defibrillator and rescue breathing to get Nwankwo’s heart started again. Later, it was determined that a genetic condition, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, was to blame, according to a university release. After the incident, Nwankwo was advised to give up playing basketball. For good. “It was very difficult,” Nwankwo says. “It just shows you things can happen in life that are unexpected. All you can do in that situation is be positive, you can’t mope.” Through it all, his former coach and teammates remained supportive. Bryant says he spoke with Nwankwo several times a week. Says Hibbert: “I talked to him, I wished him the best. He still wants to get back and play, but I told him make sure he gets healthy first before anything like that happens.” A year later, with Nwankwo essentially serving as a coach, Georgetown and Vanderbilt met in the Sweet 16. “All you can do is make the most of the situation and support your teammates,” Nwankwo says of being unable to line up opposite Hibbert. “We lost, but if someone was going to beat us, it was a good friend.” Now, with the Hoyas set to take on South Florida tonight at Verizon Center, Hibbert has a chance to play against Williams. “It’s what we wanted when we were in high school, to play against each other,” Hibbert says. In reality, it is unlikely that the two will go head-to-head. Hibbert has become a star, averaging 13.2 points and 6.9 rebounds this season, while Williams remains a role player for the Bulls. Plagued by knee injuries, he averages just four minutes a night. And, while Hibbert enjoys playing for the 18-2 Hoyas, Williams’ USF squad is a lowly 10-12 (1-8 Big East). But even if Hibbert and Williams spend little time together on the floor tomorrow night, the two good friends already have plans for after the season ends. “Aris is like my best friend,” Hibbert says. “We have plans for after the season to go hang out and have fun. I won’t say where, but we’re gonna go have fun after the season and just chill out.”

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