FORT WORTH, Texas \u2013 James Nnaji, a 2023 NBA draft pick making his college debut for Baylor, was booed when he entered the game at TCU and every time he touched the ball after that.<\/p>\n
The jeers were loud the couple of times the 7-foot center tried to protest a call, and Baylor coach Scott Drew made sure to get Nnaji out of the game after the 21-year-old Nigerian picked up a fourth foul with 4:42 remaining in the Horned Frogs’ 69-63 victory<\/a> in their Big 12 opener Saturday.<\/p>\n Imagine the delight of the TCU fans \u2014 and the chagrin of the solid Baylor contingent among them in a meeting of conference rivals with campuses 100 miles apart \u2014 if Nnaji had been forced to make the walk to the bench with a fifth foul.<\/p>\n It was enough that Drew and TCU coach Jamie Dixon weren’t quite sure what to make of the crowd’s visceral reaction to Nnaji, whose signing was announced on Christmas Eve and led to criticism from coaches across college basketball.<\/p>\n \u201cJames did nothing wrong,\u201d Drew said after Nnaji finished with five points and four rebounds in 16 minutes. \u201cBaylor did nothing wrong, and I know he\u2019s human and just making sure he doesn\u2019t feel that. If James was an NBA player today, he would be in the NBA.\u201d<\/p>\n Nnaji spent four years playing professionally in Europe before Detroit drafted him as an 18 year old with the first pick of the second round (31st overall) 2 1\/2 years ago. His draft rights have since been traded to Charlotte and New York.<\/p>\n Since Nnaji never signed an NBA contract, Baylor’s move prompted the NCAA<\/a> to issue a statement saying any players who have signed NBA deals won’t be eligible. A handful of players who spent time in the developmental G League without some version of an NBA deal have turned up at college programs.<\/p>\n Nnaji has four years of eligibility because he hasn’t attended a U.S. college, and Drew said he and his family simply want to see him get a degree. Nnaji wasn’t made available to reporters after his first college game.<\/p>\n \u201cJames is a great young man,\u201d Drew said. \u201cGrew up playing piano in the church. Mom\u2019s most excited about his opportunity to get a degree. Brother\u2019s a mechanical engineer. Sister\u2019s trying to get a master\u2019s. I thought he did a great job in a short period of time. He hadn\u2019t played a competitive game in seven months, been recovering from an injury.\u201d<\/p>\n Dixon said he doesn’t notice crowd reactions anyway, and mentioned that he joked with Drew by saying, \u201cYou’re famous now, huh?\u201d That was after someone in the front row of the student section held up a sign that read, \u201cScott, college coaches don’t respect you.\u201d<\/p>\n Most of the coaches who questioned the signing of Nnaji, including Arkansas’ John Calipari, have said they don’t blame Drew or any other coach. They blame the lack of standards in the rapidly shifting landscape of college sports. <\/p>\n College basketball has long toed the professional line more closely than football because of plentiful international talent and the many U.S. athletes who attend college for just one season. The money involved with name, image and likeness (NIL) has further destabilized the system.<\/p>\n \u201cCall it what it is,\u201d Dixon said. \u201cWe have professional basketball with no cap, no draft, no rules, no interpretation. It\u2019s not in writing. You can be as good as you want to be. You\u2019ve seen that in football. You\u2019ve seen it in basketball. Put the resources into it.\u201d<\/p>\n Nnaji’s first college points came on a putback dunk \u2014 the one time fans didn’t have a chance to boo him until he had already slammed the ball through the hoop and was running down the court.<\/p>\n The loudest cheers for him also came from TCU fans \u2014 when Nnaji missed his first college free throw before making the second. Drew didn’t have a specific plan for how many minutes Nnaji would play, but didn’t come close to putting him back in after that fourth foul.<\/p>\n \u201cGood,\u201d Drew said when asked how Nnaji was handling the extra attention. \u201cThe fact that he\u2019s excited about going to class and getting a degree and being around guys his age and being in college, that\u2019s exciting for me. It\u2019s just like any parent, you give a Christmas gift and your kid likes it, you\u2019re happy.\u201d<\/p>\n Many in college basketball aren’t.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here<\/a> and here<\/a> (AP News mobile app). AP college basketball: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll<\/a> and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-basketball<\/a><\/p>\n Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT WORTH, Texas \u2013 James Nnaji, a 2023 NBA draft pick making his college debut for Baylor, was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117,49119,44558,49120,154],"class_list":{"0":"post-110112","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-fort-worth","9":"tag-fort-worth-headlines","10":"tag-fort-worth-news","11":"tag-james-nnaji","12":"tag-john-calipari","13":"tag-scott-drew","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}