Foreign Legions

Marilyn Olsen, the secretary in the basketball office at the University of the Pacific, takes her lunch each day between noon and one. Tigers coach Bob Thomason always makes sure that someone on his staff covers for her. "You never know," Thomason will say with that mixture of fastidiousness and optimism characteristic of his profession. "Some 7-footer might call."

On April 4, 1995, shortly after 8 p.m. Greenwich mean time, a 7-foot, 20-year-old Nigerian-born former English high school long jump champion picked up the phone in his London home and called the Pacific basketball office just as assistant coach Tony Marcopulos was tucking into a sandwich. "I know this sounds peculiar," the caller said, "but I'm 7 feet tall, and I want to play basketball."

Marcopulos remembers everything about the call. He remembers his salami-and-cheese on sourdough. He remembers the caller's being unfazed to learn that Pacific had no scholarships left and that he would have to pay his own way, at $18,000 a year. Marcopulos remembers most vividly the way the conversation began—"I know this sounds peculiar"—because that word peculiar sounded, well, peculiar.

The caller, Michael Olowokandi, had chosen Pacific after randomly opening a guide to U.S. colleges to the P's. Over the following weeks Marcopulos cultivated a relationship with Olowokandi over the phone, figuring that the Tigers couldn't lose: At best the guy really would be 7 feet tall and could play, and life at this sleepy school in Stockton, Calif., might turn into a Kevin Bacon movie; at worst there would be another foreigner walking around campus.

Fast-forward 33 months, and peculiar doesn't begin to describe this Tiger's tale. The 7'1" Olowokandi, now a senior, is shooting 65% from the field for the season. He's blocking 2.6 shots a game. He's averaging 20.3 points and 10.5 rebounds, having double-doubled against every highly touted center he has faced: 31 points and 11 rebounds against Pepperdine's 6'11" omm'A Givens; 23 and 10 against Fresno State's 6'11" Avondre Jones; 26 and 11 against Stanford's 7-foot Tim Young; and 21 and 13 against Baylor's 6'10" Brian Skinner. Just so St. Mary's 7'3" center, Brad Millard, who is out with a broken bone in his left foot, would know what he was missing, Olowokandi dropped 25 points and 15 rebounds on the Gaels.

Pacific has had to install extra seats behind the baskets at its Spanos Center to accommodate all the NBA scouts beguiled by the Kandi Man (as Olowokandi is known), who has played less than 100 games with uniforms and referees in his life. "He's come so far," says Pacific guard Adam Jacobsen, "and he keeps getting better."

The same might be said generally of the scores of foreigners playing U.S. college ball: They've come so far; they keep getting better. Olowokandi is both the best story and the best talent among the raft of foreigners in Division I ball this season, 268 in all, almost twice the number that suited up five years ago. They come from 59 countries (pages 62-63), from nations large (Canada is represented by 43 players, by far the most of any country) and small (Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has a single representative), and they seem to include every Tomasz (Cielebak of Poland, who's at Marist), Dirk (Lommerse of Australia, at UNC Asheville) and Haris (Begicevic of Bosnia, at Tennessee-Chattanooga).

Their provenance can be both descriptive (Butler's 7'2" Rolf van Rijn, who's from Best, the Netherlands, is a shot-blocking fool) and misleading (Villanova's 7'1" Rafal Bigus, who comes from a Polish town called Stargard, is a center whose game needs work). They include an Igor (Nikolic, a Serb at UAB) and an Ivo (Kresta, a Czech at Iona), and a Badou (Kane, a Senegalese at Manhattan) and a Panu (Majala, a Finn at the Citadel). There are also namesakes of a faith healer (Oral Roberts of Saint Vincent plays for Mississippi State) and a sexual healer (Marvin Gay of Trinidad and Tobago is at Murray State), and several ungainly hyphenates (Kojo Mensah-Bonsu from Great Britain is at Washington State and Saliou-Binet Telly of Mali is, curiously enough, at American).

But exotic though some of these monikers may be, several have become household names in college basketball. Maryland's 89-83 overtime upset of then No. 1 North Carolina last week turned on plays involving the Tar Heels' Makhtar Ndiaye and Ademola Okulaja and the Terps' Obinna Ekezie and Sarunas Jasikevicius—a Senegalese, a German, a Nigerian and a Lithuanian, respectively.

The foreign invasion extends below the big time, too: Several scouting services list a Dutchman, 6'11" Dan Gadzuric, who is prepping at Governor Dummer Academy in Byfield, Mass., as the best high school senior who has not yet signed, while a Yugoslav, 7'3" Aleksandar Radojevic of Barton County (Kans.) Community College, is regarded as the top juco prospect. Thus the question arises, How does a college recruiter get da keys to Dakar (12 residents of the Senegalese capital are playing on 11 U.S. college teams) and other distant locales?