{"id":184065,"date":"2026-04-03T01:25:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T01:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/184065\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T01:25:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T01:25:08","slug":"tobe-awaka-once-overlooked-nyc-prep-star-shining-for-arizona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/184065\/","title":{"rendered":"Tobe Awaka, once overlooked NYC prep star, shining for Arizona"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>INDIANAPOLIS \u2014 Tobe Awaka smiled as he recalled his journey \u2014 and just how far he has come in the last four years.<\/p>\n<p>As a senior at Cardinal Hayes in The Bronx in 2022, he earned Catholic League and Gatorade New York Player of the Year honors. Yet he lacked a high-major scholarship offer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt means a lot. You look back at it, it\u2019s kind of surreal,\u201d the<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/04\/02\/sports\/bryce-james-shielded-from-final-four-interviews-by-arizona-enforcer\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> Arizona<\/a> forward told The Post on Thursday inside Lucas Oil Stadium as the Wildcats prepared to face Michigan in the Final Four. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot of hard work and staying consistent.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The chiseled 6-foot-8 Awaka was a late bloomer. He didn\u2019t start taking basketball seriously until high school. The COVID-19 pandemic ended his sophomore season early and cost him his junior season. There was one mid-major head coach from the area who saw Awaka at an open gym, and didn\u2019t think he was good enough for his level.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"INDIANAPOLIS \u2014 Tobe Awaka smiled as he recalled his journey \u2014 and just how far he has come&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[74078,3361,63551,68679,63552,9,56,63,65,64,319,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-184065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-arizona-wildcats","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-march-madness","11":"tag-march-madness-2026","12":"tag-ncaa-tournament","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-ny","15":"tag-nyc","16":"tag-nyc-headlines","17":"tag-nyc-news","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-sports-plus"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}