The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Sanogo quickly becoming one of UConn’s greats
LAS VEGAS — Wherever Adama Sanogo winds up on the subjective list of most important players in UConn men’s basketball history, he’ll have reached that place smiling and laughing along the way as much as player before him.
“Word?” Sanogo said, smiling again and laughing again, this time in the UConn locker room Wednesday at T-Mobile Arena. “I just want to be a nice guy, man. I’ve been everywhere in the world. I just want to be a guy to share peace. I just want to share peace with everybody. Coming from a place where you have nothing, and to a place like here — people watch you, and people like you — it makes you humble. So I just want to stay humble.”
The time to put Sanogo’s career in perspective hasn’t quite arrived, but it is fast approaching.
Maybe his UConn experience ends this week in Las Vegas, in the Sweet 16 or Elite Eight.
Maybe it comes to a close next week at the Final Four in Houston, with or without a national championship.
Maybe goodbye won’t be until the conclusion of next season, as Sanogo has yet to decide whether he will return as a senior.
“We will see,” Sanogo said. “I don’t know. We’re going to see. I’ll do whatever is best for me. Options. Decisions to make. That’s definitely good. That’s something definitely I’m proud of. Right now I just want to beat Arkansas and whoever we play Saturday. At the end, I’ll be fine. I don’t want to make a mistake.”
There is ample opportunity, whatever the timeline, for Sanogo to put forth a giant final entry or entries toward a discussion about how his time in Storrs, during the formative years of a program’s resurrection, will be remembered. As UConn prepares to face Arkansas Thursday in a West Region semifinal, Sanogo is inching toward air breathed only by certain players.
“He’s had a heck of a career,”
coach Dan Hurley said. “He’s getting [toward] a Final Four. He’s advancing in this tournament further. If he does that, we’ll be talking about one of the all-time great players in UConn history. He’s at the doorsteps of that.”
Sanogo is averaging 17.3 points and 7.5 rebounds, and shooting 60.5 percent from the field, for the Huskies (28-7). His career averages of 13.8 points and 7.2 rebounds through 87 games are in line with numbers registered by some of the best post players in program history, from Kevin Freeman to Emeka Okafor to Josh Boone and beyond. He has been the offensive focal point and the team’s most dependable scoring threat in the ways of Richard Hamilton, Kemba Walker, Shabazz Napier and others.
All of the aforementioned players won a national championship.
If the Huskies add another this season, it certainly will be, in part, because Sanogo continues to thrive at the heart of everything the team has done increasingly well since his arrival in 2020. He is a refined and rested version of himself this season, much like this deep team as a whole, and making plays he was not capable of down the stretch of his sophomore 2021-22 season.
Sanogo, 21, already is the most valuable UConn player of this era, the kid from Mali who came to the United States at the age of 15 not knowing a word of English. Six years later he is the face of the program, a dominant basketball force in national flag blue, a mountain of a young man with the shoulders of a defensive lineman and the easiest, most charming personality.
“He’s always smiling and he’s always laughing, and I really appreciate that because sometimes there are rough days in practice and he’s like, ‘It’s all good, it’s all right,’” said Sanogo’s roommate, senior guard Nahiem Alleyne. “I just love him.”
Sanogo scored points, making 24 of 33 shots, in victories over Iona and St. Mary’s to lead UConn into the Sweet 16. He came to UConn with exceptional footwork that has only gotten better and he has extended his game to the perimeter, making 17 of 48 3-pointers after entering the season 0for-1 in his career. He’s now up-faking defenders who have to respect his jump shot, driving to the basket where once he was purely a scorer when first establishing himself in the post. He’s become a much better passer. Committing needless fouls, as he did so often as a freshman, is a behavior corrected.
“He’s a great person and, to be honest with you, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this happy, ever since the postseason [started], how well he’s been doing and how well we’ve been doing as a team,” said Sanogo’s understudy, Donovan Clingan, the 7-foot-2 freshman from Bristol.
Sanogo grew up in Bamako, the Mali capital. He was part of camps in Africa as a kid, attracting the attention of the American prep school world, and wound up attending high schools in New York and New Jersey before coming to UConn, where he quickly became one of the Huskies’ most demanding leaders and likable players.
“Great family background, comes from great pedigree,” Hurley said. “And I think he works so hard at everything that he does. I think innately he just feels like he’s got a lot of confidence because he knows he’s putting in tremendous work. … He’s grown and he’s comfortable in his own skin. And I think he just believes in himself.”
Mali is one of the world’s poorest nations. Sanogo’s family remains there and is comfortable, he said, but his dream is to buy a house and a car for his parents and each of his five siblings. His father, Cheickne Sanogo, is retired but previously operated car washes in Bamako. His mother, Awa Traore, has a clothing store. One sister is studying in France and his lone brother is studying in Italy.
Englis is Sanogo’s fourth language. He is also fluent in French, Arabic and Bambara.
Clingan grew up in Bristol, about 40 miles from Gampel Pavilion and pretty much a straight shot across I-84.
Bamako is across the Atlantic Ocean, some 4,500 miles from Storrs.
“I have talked to him and Samson, those two in particular about this,” Clingan said. “To be away from your family, that far away — Adama went to Mali last summer, Samson went to Togo. That was the first time in two or three years they had seen their family. I go a month or so and I just want to go home and say hi to my people. But it just shows the love, especially Adama, he has the for game and what he’s willing to do to help his family in the long run. That’s all Adama is talking about, trying to help his family the best way he can.”
At 6-9, Sanogo is projected as an undersized center in the NBA and his draft potential is difficult to figure — as is whether he would benefit from another year in college. As an international student, Sanogo is without the ability to cash in on name, image and likeness opportunities in ways his American teammates can.
And to think what marketing prowess he might have. Sanogo’s English has improved dramatically over his three years in Storrs. Where he was sometimes uncomfortable speaking to the media, especially in formal settings that put him on stage, he’s been front and center this season, particularly of late. That is part of a concerted effort by UConn to help him make a name for himself.
Sanogo’s play is doing that, too. He’s the best player on the best UConn team in years. Depending on how the next few days or weeks or next year play out, he might have a permanent place in the discussion about the best to ever come through the program.
“I’ve got to keep going,” Sanogo said. “Play good in this tournament, and I think I can be one of them.”