Alex Oriakhi is in his sophomore year as a Forward/Center for the UConn Huskies. It was on his fifth birthday that his mother bought him his first basketball. “I’ve been playing ever since. I just watched basketball, and fell in love with it.”

Beating the number one team (at the time) Texas, last January, is Alex’s most memorable experience from his freshman year. “It was definitely a great experience. The fans (at Gampel Pavilion) were our sixth man. I knew they weren’t going to let us lose that game, and then after the game they all stormed the court. It was great.”

As a sophomore now, Alex is going to try to help the new freshman through the tough times, and encourage them to be tougher. “We are a very young team as everyone knows, so I’m going to just try to be the leader out their on the court.”

When asked what it will take to make Coach Calhoun happy Alex said, “Wins, that’s all he wants to do is win, and I feel the same way, that’s all I want to do is win.”

To get back to the NCAA Tournament Alex said, it’s going to take playing hard every night no matter who is doing the scoring, and we have to play good defense because defense wins championships.”

So far UConn has definitely been what Alex expected it would be. “It’s been a great experience, and I just want to win more basketball games, and bring this team to the top of the college basketball ranks as it should be.”

Thoughts on new assistant coach Kevin Ollie: “I call him the energizer bunny. He’s a great motivator, and he’s never tired so when you work out with him you never get tired because you feed off from his energy.”

Winning a high school championship at Tilton Prep School in New Hampshire with his teammate Jamal Coombs-McDaniel (also a player at UConn) had been Alex’s most memorable experience before UConn. Alex and Jamal have played on the same Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) team, have been roommates, and played at prep school together for three years, and now they are roommates playing at UConn together.

In making his decision to come to UConn, it was all about location. “My parents live in Massachusetts only 1 ½ hours away so they can come to UConn anytime. Coach Calhoun is a really a great coach with his big men, and the number of players that get drafted into the National Basketball Association (NBA) from UConn, were both big factors for me.” Alex and Jamal are the youngest players during the Coach Calhoun era to have made their college commitment to UConn prior to starting their sophomore year in high school.