A Must Read

Many college basketball players are spoiled punks. Not this one.

TUCSON, Ariz. -- The first sign something was wrong with Mohamed Tangara surfaced well before Arizona's first official basketball practice in October.

University of Arizona assistant coach Josh Pastner was working with the rugged freshman forward from Mali in September, astounded by his sudden lack of stamina about a month into preseason workouts.

Tangara never stopped trying -- the Wildcats recruited him in part because of his relentless drive to succeed -- but he simply could not explode the way Pastner saw him do at Mount Zion Academy in North Carolina.

"Sometimes, he wasn't able to dunk as much or jump as much as he can," Pastner said. "It wasn't because of his ability. It wasn't that he couldn't do it, because he can. And he would keep pushing himself."

Pushing himself nowhere. Pastner began to suspect the tank was empty. He had seen signs of it before: He knew Tangara, eager to send every possible penny to his impoverished homeland, had limited his daily high school diet with an appalling frugality.

"I remember going to his dorm room, where he had cheese crackers and cheese nibs," Pastner said. "He had a thing of saltine crackers, and that was it. He kept saying it was the cheapest thing so he could save all his money. He was living on pretzels and crackers. It was amazing."

At the same time in September, then-Arizona strength coach Brad Arnett began to notice that Tangara was not exploding in the weight room, either. Tangara was regressing.

So Arizona staffers weighed Tangara. Alarmed, they notified coach Lute Olson.

"The trainer and strength coach came to me and said Mohamed had lost eight pounds," Olson said. "They were concerned he was not getting enough to eat. They didn't think he had energy."

Olson, who recruited inner-city athletes from Chicago during his days at Iowa and has had several Arizona players come out of relative poverty in other cities, said he had never seen anything like it. He had never seen an athlete strive so hard to send money home.