Thirty minutes after his team disposed of Oklahoma on Sunday, Emeka Okafor, Connecticut's junior virtuoso, sat on a weight bench talking to reporters about, among other things, his team's defensive performance.
He began giving an elaborate answer before starting over because, in his mind, it wasn't clear or concise enough.
"This is the best defense we've played this year," he finally said. "Simple, right?"
Moments later, the topic veered toward the art of shot blocking, which Okafor clearly has mastered.
"It's all about feeling the rhythm," he said. "You can't really guess [where the shot is going to be]. You have to feel."
He paused, struggling for the right words. Then he blurted, almost apologetically, "Ah, ah, my brain is tired."
Born Chukwuemeka Noubuisi Okafor 21 years ago, he is the key to U-Conn.'s championship drive this season. But Okafor is far more. When his college career ends -- he is expected to be a top pick in June's NBA draft -- it will be defined as much for his uniqueness as a person as his ability as a basketball player.
Deliberate, precise, meticulous, Okafor has laser-like focus, allowing him to home in on a task at any moment, whether it is studying for his lone investment finance course this semester, working on his midrange jump shot or answering questions from the throng of reporters covering his top-ranked Huskies.
He has a grade-point average around 3.8, and this spring will have a finance degree after just three years of college. In an age of heightened college scandal on campus, one of the most talented players in the game has proven that the term student-athlete isn't necessarily an oxymoron.
"If we were going to have a poster boy for college basketball, [I'd pick him]," said Oklahoma Coach Kelvin Sampson, whose Sooners lost to U-Conn., 86-59, Sunday. "We've had some great student-athletes in the past. I know Grant Hill, when he was going through Duke, was a great poster boy. . . . I thought Tim Duncan was, too, and I'd put Emeka Okafor right in that class. He does it the right way."
Okafor has Nigerian-born parents who have stressed education through example. His father, Pius, is a certified accountant now pursuing a doctorate in pharmacy at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. His mother, Celestina, is a registered nurse living in Houston, where Emeka grew up and played high school basketball.
Truth be told, Okafor always has been toughest on himself. When he came home in fourth grade with a "B," he cried. "I encouraged him not to cry," Pius said.
Okafor, asked Sunday by a reporter if he could have a better performance than his 21-point game against Oklahoma, said: "Of course. I only had 10 boards."
In the summer, Okafor plays in a gym until the lights are turned off at 2 a.m. "He has to go home when they turn off the lights," Pius said.
He is so deliberate that in high school he was occasionally late for the team van for his Amateur Athletic Union team because he would take five minutes to brush his teeth, said his former Houston Lynx coach, George Schudy. So disciplined that early in high school he occasionally kept a textbook nearby at practice to read during spare moments.
"It's almost paradoxical," Schudy said, "that someone so methodical could be so quick on the court."
But he is -- whether it's running in the open court, catching passes from teammates and throwing down resounding dunks, as Okafor did numerous times Sunday, or blocking shots to spark the Huskies' transition game, as he did nine times Sunday.
The U-Conn. staff likens the 6-foot-10, 252-pound Okafor to an Olympic athlete, one with a quick learning curve. His points per game average has risen from seven as a freshman to 16 last year to nearly 19 this season.
"He is able to prioritize things and put things in boxes and work on them individually," U-Conn. assistant George Blaney said. "I don't know if I have ever seen a kid do it the way he separates things."
When Pius answers the phone now, he often pretends he is someone else until he knows who is calling. Too many agents, he said, looking to make inroads.
"[Okafor] is a great college player who will need to develop his perimeter game in the NBA," said Rick Majerus, whose Utah team lost to U-Conn. earlier this season. "[In college] he dominates with his strength and athleticism. I love him."
Blaney, though, said Okafor might be the team's best 15-foot jump shooter, but the makeup of the team does not require him to shoot jumpers.
The consensus is that Okafor will be a successful something, perhaps an NBA player, senator or CEO, all of which are fine with his parents. Schudy remembers the following portion of a speech Okafor made to high school players at a Houston Lynx reunion after his freshman year at U-Conn.:
"Three or four rooms down on one side of my dorm, [students] might be using drugs. Three or four rooms down on the other side, they might be drinking all the time. I don't do that because I am going somewhere."
Schudy's son, Robert, a Texas Christian senior who roomed with Okafor on his 1999 AAU team, recently e-mailed Okafor this quotation from author Glenville Kleiser:
"Men who have attained things worth having in this world have worked while others idled, have persevered when others gave up in despair, have practiced early in life the valuable habits of self-denial, industry, and singleness of purpose. As a result, they enjoy in later life the success others so often attribute to good luck."
Case in point: Asked what he thought of the row of NBA scouts in attendance Sunday, Okafor replied, "I didn't even look."