CORNELL STAR DIVIDES HER TIME AND CONQUERS

By Jere Longman, New York Times - March 22, 2008

When Cornell recruited Jeomi Maduka, it was primarily for her ability to jump horizontally, not vertically. Track, not basketball, seemed to be her best sport.

Cornell’s Jeomi Maduka is the Ivy League player of the year in basketball and an all-American long jumper in track.

“I kind of thought she’d try basketball for a month and come back and do track,” said Lou Duesing, the longtime women’s track coach at Cornell.

Instead, Maduka has split her time between the sports with stirring results. A 6-foot-1 junior forward, she is the Ivy League basketball player of the year and a primary reason the Big Red (20-8) has reached the N.C.A.A. women’s tournament for the first time. On Sunday, Cornell will face Connecticut, the No. 1 overall seed, in the first round in Bridgeport, Conn.

Last weekend, before leading Cornell to an Ivy playoff victory, Maduka finished eighth in the long jump at the N.C.A.A. indoor track and field championships. She has qualified for this summer’s Olympic trials with a personal outdoor best of 21 feet 4 ¾ inches. Twice this season she has competed in a track meet in the morning or afternoon and played a basketball game at night.

Her shuttling between sports reflects the wild, emotional ride that Cornell took to qualify for the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament. According to the selection committee, there are 63 better teams in the 64-team women’s field. But there is not a more compelling story, one that involved a little luck, a dedicated xylophone player and a New York State quarter pulled out of a bag.

“What’s most satisfying is when people recognize how much work and effort I put into it,” Maduka said in a telephone interview. “I can make it seem like it’s really easy and it doesn’t take that much. Actually, it does.”

She is from Arlington, Tex., situated between Dallas and Fort Worth, the daughter of parents born in Nigeria. Her father, Charles, is a former assistant district attorney in Dallas County. Her mother, Gloria, is a pharmacist. Maduka plans to attend medical school, perhaps to become a pediatrician. In high school she was voted to an all-regional orchestra as a violinist. In college she is multitasking in the basketball-track slipstream of Marion Jones and Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

“This season Jeomi has learned how to combine her athleticism with skill,” Dayna Smith, the Cornell women’s basketball coach, said of Maduka, who leads the team with 14.3 points a game, 7.6 rebounds a game and 62 steals. “The last couple of years she relied on being able to outjump and outsprint someone on the court. This season she has developed her post game, learned how to use her strength in positioning and finishing.”

Even so, until last Sunday, the Big Red’s chances of qualifying for the N.C.A.A. tournament hung in the air, undetermined, like a jump ball. The uncertainty began with a lost weekend at Dartmouth and Harvard. After a 46-44 loss at Dartmouth on Feb. 29, Cornell faced the discouraging prospect of playing the next night at Harvard without Maduka, who was to compete instead in the Ivy League indoor track and field championships.

Dropping off Maduka at the airport was not a happy feeling, Smith said. As the Big Red’s leading scorer and rebounder left the team bus, Julie Greco, a team spokeswoman, said, “I was surprised people weren’t hanging on her ankles, saying, ‘Please don’t go.’”

At the Ivy indoor championships, held at Cornell, Maduka won three events and set a school record in the 60-meter dash (7.58 seconds), an indoor school and meet record in the long jump (21-2) and an indoor school record in the triple jump (43-1 ¾).

The basketball team did not fare as well, losing at Harvard on March 1 by 51-48. The Big Red had entered that weekend in first place in the Ivy League. Now Cornell was tied for second. It would need help to make the N.C.A.A. tournament.

After defeating Penn on March 7, Cornell routed Princeton at home on March 8. Still, the Ivy League title was not assured. To force a three-way playoff, the Big Red needed for Harvard to lose at Yale that night.

After the Cornell game ended, more than a hundred Big Red players, family members and friends remained at Newman Arena in Ithaca. The players gathered at midcourt, most pacing nervously. Others watched streaming video and statistical updates of the Harvard-Yale game on computers along press row. There were encouraging shouts across the gym, a couple of false-alarm endings and then finally a result: Yale 64, Harvard 58.

Cornell, Dartmouth and Harvard had finished in a first-place tie. The public-address system blared “We Are the Champions.” A lone xylophone player from the Cornell pep band banged out the school fight song, set to the tune of “Give My Regards to Broadway.” A ladder was brought out, and the Big Red players cut down the nets.

Still, little had been resolved. Only one Ivy team would qualify for the N.C.A.A. tournament. A three-way playoff would be necessary. And Maduka might have to choose between basketball and the N.C.A.A. indoor track championships.

“I didn’t have time to think what I would have done,” Maduka said.

Fortunately for her and her team, she did not have to make a choice.

On March 10, three quarters representing the states of New York (Cornell), Massachusetts (Harvard) and New Hampshire (Dartmouth) were placed into a bag. One was to be drawn. The winner would get a bye in the three-way playoff. Cornell won the draw, leaving Maduka free to compete in the N.C.A.A. track meet on March 14 in Fayetteville, Ark., and in the final of the Ivy League basketball playoff at Columbia two days later.

“I woke up to text messages telling me we got the bye,” Maduka said. “I was happy.”

During the winter, given the N.C.A.A. limit of 20 hours of participation a week, she generally spends two days practicing basketball and two with the track team. In recent weeks her schedule has become skewed more toward basketball, detracting from the technical precision needed for long-jumping. Still, Maduka finished eighth at the N.C.A.A. indoor meet on March 14 with a jump of 20-5 1/4 without having practiced all week, sufficient to earn all-American honors.

“She jumped probably as far as second place, but she never got close to the board,” Duesing said.

Last year Maduka was ranked as the 10th best American long jumper. To qualify for one of three spots on the Olympic team, she may have to add nearly a foot to her personal best. But the field is somewhat open, given that Jones is in federal prison for lying to investigators about her use of performance-enhancing drugs and her role in a check-fraud scheme.

“Jeomi’s erratic on the runway,” Duesing said. “Every now and then she hits one. I think she has the tools to jump very far.”

After the March 14 meet, Maduka returned to her hotel in Fayetteville at 11:30 p.m., slept for two hours and caught an early flight on Saturday to La Guardia Airport. She arrived just after noon, in time to eat half a sandwich and practice with the basketball team. On Sunday, she scored 14 points, grabbed 8 rebounds, blocked 2 shots and made 3 steals as Cornell defeated Dartmouth, 64-47, and won the Ivy League’s berth to the tournament.

“I was a little sore,” Maduka said. “But that’s life.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/sports/ncaabasketball/22cornell.html?_r=1&st=cse&sq=cornell+basketball&scp=1&oref=slogin