Niang a fast learner

By Gary Bedore     Nov 22, 2002

Scott McClurg/Journal-World Photo
Kansas University forward/center Moulaye Niang stretches before Tuesday's Preseason NIT game against Holy Cross in Allen Fieldhouse.

He might not be Senegal’s biggest soccer fan.

But svelte 6-foot-10, 215-pound Moulaye Niang of Kaolack, Senegal, just might be the tallest supporter of the West African soccer power, which surprisingly advanced to the quarterfinals of the World Cup last summer in Japan before losing to Turkey, 1-0.

“I was up at four o’clock in the morning to watch Senegal play. I was ecstatic,” he said. “I grew up playing soccer. I was a midfielder.”

Niang watched his countrymen storm into the quarterfinals from San Diego, where he attended high school. But Niang played basketball ” not soccer ” his junior and senior years at El Cajon Christian High.

Niang, who first picked up a basketball five years ago at age 14, could be the first man off the bench for Kansas University in a matchup with UNC Greensboro at 6 tonight in Allen Fieldhouse.

He admits he is a good soccer player, but could Niang play for the Senegalese national team?

“If I pursued it, yeah I think I could,” he said.

Niang is now playing basketball because he inexplicably fell in love with the game at age 14.

“I was always tall, but nobody in my family played basketball,” Niang said, noting he was too poor to even purchase a roundball. “My friends would say, ‘Let’s go play basketball.’ I would say, ‘No, I don’t want to.’ One day I got out of school and one of my friends said, ‘Let’s go shoot.’

“I went and decided it was fun. I kept going. One day I met a coach of a club team and he said, ‘You want to learn basketball?’ I said, ‘Yeah.'”

Niang proved he was serious by agreeing to practice with the club-team coach, who lived five miles away. Niang had no means of transportation.

So he walked.

“I walked five miles to practice and walked five miles back to my house every Sunday,” Niang said. “Then in the summer I did it every day. I’d walk five miles and five miles back.”

And he’d sometimes get soaked ” the summer is the rainy season in Senegal.

“One thing my parents taught me: If you want to do something, do it at your best,” Niang said. “I’ve always tried to do the best I can, with the club team, then in San Diego, now here.”

A family friend in Senegal who knew a teacher in San Diego made it possible for Niang to attend Christian High.

There he progressed rapidly and drew the attention of college coaches from Connecticut, Michigan, Georgia Tech, San Diego State, New Mexico, several Pac-10 schools and Kansas, which signed Niang to a national letter last November.

“I thought Moulaye would be able to play for us before he left (KU) for sure, but I thought it might be down the road,” KU coach Roy Williams said.

“He just hasn’t played enough basketball. Because of our lack of depth, No. 1, and also for how hard he works and how quickly he picks things up, particularly on the defensive end of the floor, the timing of that is a lot quicker than I thought it’d be. If you ask me if I’m pleased, I’d say yes. I want him to do a lot more. He needs to do a lot more for us to be really good. He is coming along.”

Still raw, Niang surprised many by throwing in an 8-foot hook shot off the backboard during Tuesday’s Preseason NIT win against Holy Cross.

“The jump hook he made the other night, I’m not so sure he meant to bank it,” Williams said. “Sometimes things look nice and smooth and it’s not what was intended.”

Yet Niang, who has impressed Williams with his “quick feet,” insists the bank was purposeful.

“Yes, I meant it. Pretty much I like to take the hook shot whenever I can,” Niang said.

He may have learned that watching NBA games on TV in Senegal.

“We have satellite TV there,” he said. “The NBA … it’s been one of my dreams to play basketball here. If you want to learn basketball, this (U.S.) is a good place.”

He still has some learning to do in basketball, not soccer.

Niang :quot; he hadn’t played any soccer since heading to the U.S. :quot; participated in a game last summer in Kansas City.

He didn’t score, but helped his squad to a tie.

“I have some friends from Senegal who go to KU,” he said. “They went to Kansas City to play in an African tournament. They didn’t have enough players so I played the first game.

“It was fun, but I only played because they needed one player. They had enough for the next game. If you are 6-5, 6-6, soccer is fine. You get to be 6-9, 6-10, soccer isn’t your sport.”

Basketball is.

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