Oscar Uduma (above) has been a key starter for Bonner this year after almost not playing hoops. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)
By Josh Verlin
Oscar Uduma didn’t plan on playing basketball this season. The rest of the Bonner-Prendergast hoops squad is sure glad he changed his mind.
“I was thinking about my brothers who I started [school] with,” Uduma said. “I didn’t want to leave them hanging.”
Uduma had been part of the Friars’ hoops program each of his first three years at the Drexel Hill Catholic school, but hadn’t been any more than a situational reserve on the varsity level, a role he only started filling the latter part of his junior year. Meanwhile, he started playing football as a junior and had quickly become a standout for the Friars, attracting scholarship offers for his work as a two-way athlete on the gridiron; he’ll play at West Chester next fall.
With it clear that his athletic career would continue in college as a football student-athlete, Uduma wasn’t sure he’d have time to get back to basketball shape, to get in one more season of the sport he’d been playing in an organized fashion since middle school.