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Well-traveled Mpondo lands at Wright State

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By Tom Archdeacon, Staff Writer 10:57 PM Thursday, October 14, 2010

FAIRBORN — In a few minutes, he would head off to the yoga class he and the rest of his Wright State basketball teammates take every Thursday afternoon at the Mills-Morgan Center.

“It makes you flexible, I think,” Johann Mpondo said with a shrug. “Some of our guys are better at it than others. Some can do stuff others can’t.”

But no player on the team has done more “stuff” or shown himself to be more flexible than the 22-year-old Mpondo, a 6-foot-8 junior transfer from the University of New Orleans (UNO):

• In the past 10 years, Mpondo has lived in Douala, Cameroon; Paris, France; Decatur, Ill.; Woodstock, Va.; New Orleans; and now Fairborn.

• He has not seen his mother and most of his closest relatives — all living back in Africa — since 2002.

• In the past few years, he’s had his Division I basketball dreams get dashed first at Rhode Island and then at UNO.

“It’s been like that since I’ve been little,” Mpondo said quietly. “I’ve learned that when something doesn’t work out, there’s always another way. So for me ... I just keep looking forward.”

And on the horizon now is a Wright State season where he is going to be counted on to give the Raiders an inside presence.

Although official practices began just today, Mpondo already is making an impact, said new head coach Billy Donlon:

“He’s bought in to how we’re trying to do things and that leadership is important — especially because of how young our locker room is.

“Johann has had to be self sufficient for a number of years. Our kids can see that and they respect it.”

Life on the move

Growing up in Douala — an industrial port city of some 3 million people — Mpondo said he was surrounded by family.

“I lived in ... aaahh ... I don’t know how to say it in English. ... I guess you’d call it a family compound,” he said. “I lived with my parents, brothers, sister and an aunt. Next door was my grandparents. Next to them was my uncle and his family.

“I’d walk to school with my cousins, then come home afterward and we’d play soccer.”

That all changed, he said, when he was 12 and was sent with his younger sister to live in Paris with his aunt.

“It was a family situation,” he said. “My mother thought it would be better for us in France. It wasn’t like I was thinking, ‘Oh, this will be cool to live in Paris.’ I had no choice.”

In Paris, he began to make a name for himself in soccer and said at age 16 he had an offer to sign professionally: “For a reason I’m not going to mention, it didn’t happen so I had to decide what to do.”

His father had played and coached basketball and both brothers played the sport, too — one played in France, and the other just finished a career at the University of Tennessee-Martin — so he finally was coaxed into following suit.

“I’d never picked up a basketball until I was 16,” he said. “I had size and natural ability, but that was it.”

It was enough to get him to America and a small Christian school in Decatur, Ill, where he said a year later the coach added six more international players. That drew college coaches and Mpondo — who speaks four languages — committed to Rhode Island, only to get derailed by the NCAA Clearing House because he was said to lack English credits.

Detoured for a year to Massanutten Prep in Virginia, he eventually caught the eye of New Orleans’ young head coach Joe Pasternack.

Katrina hits

Five years ago, the winds and flood waters of Hurricane Katrina ravaged the UNO hoops program. Lakefront Arena was flooded. Seats were destroyed. Part of the roof was blown off.

While the team would relocate to the University of Texas-Tyler for a couple of months, right after the storm two players got trapped in the city and ended up atop the I-10 overpass with other refugees as floodwaters rose and chaos reigned.

Eventually, the Privateers gym was refurbished and three seasons ago the team won 19 games and upset North Carolina. But UNO’s student population dropped from 17,000 to 12,000, and in May 2009 a campus vote to raise student athletic fees failed. The financial pinch that followed prompted administrators to decide to downscale from D-1 to a nonscholarship D-III program.

“After the eighth game, coach came into the dressing room and told us we were going to D-III,” said Mpondo, who started 24 of 52 games in his two seasons at UNO. “I’m not going to blame it solely on that, but we were 6-2 and after that we lost seven straight.

“Some seniors quit before the season ended. Guys were playing for themselves trying to get a scholarship for next year. It’s too bad what happened.”

Because the NCAA didn’t impose a transfer penalty, UNO players had plenty of suitors and ended up at programs across the nation.

Although he’s never seen a Raiders game at the Nutter Center, Mpondo chose WSU over several schools because he said he liked what he found when he came for an after-the-season visit:

“I got to know the guys and I talked to Coach Donlon and I liked what I heard. I wanted to be in a situation where I could play and help a team win, and I think that can happen here. I feel comfortable here. I think this will be a good place for me.”

For the past 10 years, that’s all he’s ever wanted.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2156 or tarchdeacon@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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