The first confab featured Brandon Noel and Alex Huibregtse, the team’s top returning scorers. The next session was to highlight two more veterans, Andrew Welage and Keaton Norris.
But they’re all likely just warm-up acts for transfer Jack Doumbia, a true headliner when it comes to hoops narrative.
“His life story is powerful,” Sargent said. “There’s a lot there for our guys to hold onto.”
Doumbia, a 23-year-old, fifth year player, came to WSU from Norfolk State after earlier stops at Cloud County Community College in Kansas and Tallahassee Community College in Florida.
At each school the 6-foot-6 wingman made modest contributions, but that’s not the most important part of his story, Sargent said:
“There’s so much more than stats and how many points he averaged. If you dig deeper into his past and what he has done, there’s an awful lot there.”
Although he was born in Maryland, Doumbia’s parents are from the Ivory Coast and moved back to their West African nation when he was eight.
He lived in Abidjan, a port city with a population of 5.6 million, and eventually shared cramped quarters with the 11 younger children of his since-separated parents.
He didn’t discover basketball until he was in his early teens, but soon was obsessed by it.
“We played barefoot on courts in the parks all day long,” he said. “It could be 100 degrees and we were out there playing barefoot.”
Although he eventually would get some basketball shoes, he said he only wore them for big games because he didn’t want to wear them out.
He had to borrow a ball until he was 14 when his mother, Rokia Diallo, got him one following a watershed moment.
“My first basketball encounter came when my mom took me to see a game played by our national team,” he said.
Les Elephants — The Elephants, as the team is known — had won the FIBA African Championship twice and made the title game six times. One of its stars was Stephane Konote, a 6-3 shooting guard, and Doumbia came to idolize him.
“They called him the African Kobe and after seeing him and the team, I was so excited,” Doumbia said. “I wanted to be a star, too, and I dreamed of going to the NBA.”
Following that national team game, he said his mom got him a basketball and it was his prize possession:
“I had it with me all the time.
“Every day at 6 in the morning, my job was to go buy bread for our family at a market. I took my ball with me and dribbled through the neighborhood the whole way there and back.
“There was park in front of my mom’s house, and I’d end up stopping and taking a few shots before I went to the market and then again before I got the bread home.”
As for hoops sustenance, he believed he had to go to America for that.
“If I wanted to be a pro, I had to play in college first,” he said.
He hoped to follow the path of Mo Bamba, the 7-foot center who was born in Harlem to parents from the Ivory Coast.
At the time, Bamba was the star of the University of Texas Longhorns. He’d soon be the No. 6 overall pick in the 2018 NBA draft by the Orlando Magic. He played for the Philadelphia 76ers last season and this week signed a free-agent contract with the Los Angeles Clippers.
At age 16, having played in an indoor gym only once in his life, Doumbia packed his meager belongings and his considerable naivete, left his family and returned to Maryland in hopes of launching his basketball dream.
“I was excited, ecstatic really,” he said. “It was like an adventure I couldn’t wait to take on.”
In the seven years since, he’s been part of six teams ― counting his pre-college stops at Lanham Christian School and KOA Prep, both in Maryland — in five different states.
He signed with Wright State in early May.
Through all the changes in address and fortune — including a promising season at Cloud County that was cut short by injury — he has had one constant.
One woman has been at his side.
He lists her as his mother, too.
And Leondra Turman calls him ‘my God-given son.”
‘She’s been a true blessing’
Turman, now the director of consulting services at the software company Adobe, had the two youngest of her three children at Lanham Christian when Doumbia started there.
Her son Stephen was a middle schooler who played on the junior varsity basketball team. Daughter Mia — who recently graduated magna cum laude from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), the alma mater of her parents — was a high school cheerleader at Lanham.
Jack was a junior on the Lions’ varsity team.
Turman recalled how she walked into the gym one day, and “all the kids came up and said ‘Hi’ to me.
“Jack walked up, too — I had never seen him before — and he said, ‘Hi Mom!’ “I said, ‘Hi’ but then I added, ‘If you’re going to call me Mom, you’ve got to introduce yourself.’ He did and after that he asked me to come to his basketball games, too.
“And I’m telling you, right from the start it was literally a divine, supernatural connection from God.
“When that kid looked me right in the eye and said, ‘Hi Mom,’ I felt something click in my heart. That’s why I say, ‘God birthed him right from my heart.’
“He is my son.”
Doumbia said they connected the first time they met:
“She saw I didn’t have much family around and I had a lot of needs and she looked at me as her son right from the start.
“She’s been a true blessing. She’s helped me in so many that I could never pay her back.”
Turman said it’s easy to embrace Doumbia when you know what kind of person he is.
Asked to explain, she took a moment to find the right words.
“Let me think here, how do I explain my son?” she said by phone from her Bowie, Maryland, home.
“He’s kind and gentle and extremely intelligent. He loves God. He loves his family and he’s extremely passionate about basketball. He’s just a wonderful, wonderful young man. I’m very proud of him. I’ll always be his No. 1 fan.”
After he asked her to come to his games — his biological parents have never seen him play — she did just that. First it was going to Lanham Christian and then to KOA Prep in Rockville, Md.
Since then, she made the trek to Cloud County CC in Concordia, Kansas, and then caught several games in Tallahassee and at Norfolk State, where Doumbia averaged 4.8 points and 2.1 rebounds in 40 games with talented Spartan teams that notched 46 wins in two seasons.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
He entered the transfer portal this spring because he thinks he has much more to offer a team, a belief shared by Sargent.
“I’m just on the (Division I) stage, but I haven’t really made my mark yet,” Doumbia said. “I haven’t won a championship. I’m still trying to figure out who I am as a player.”
As a person though, he’s shown plenty. And when that point was brought up to him the other day, he final conceded:
“I feel like I’m carrying a lot on my shoulders, but it’s a privilege. I want to live up to the expectations.
“I am the first one in college in our family and I feel I’m setting a good example for my siblings.
“Everything I’ve done so far, everything I’ve accomplished, I believe it’s something they can look up to. They can say. ‘My big brother plays Division I basketball. I think they can be proud of that.”
Turman certainly is:
“He’s come a long, long way.”
Chance to win a championship
After Raiders workouts the other day, Doumbia found a seat in the practice gym at the Mills Morgan Center and made an admission.
Until a few months ago he said he had never heard of Wright State University.
When he entered the portal, he drew some interest, especially from Saint Peter’s University, the Jersey City, N.J., school which had made the NCAA Tournament two of the past three seasons and advanced to the Elite Eight in 2022.
The Peacocks had previously recruited him when he came out of Tallahassee CC. So had Wagner University.
Credit: Joseph R. Craven
Credit: Joseph R. Craven
Wright State entered the mix when associate head coach Travis Trice connected with Brandon Howell, a former college player who is now a high school and AAU coach in Maryland.
Howell sold Trice on Doumbia, who was then invited to WSU on a visit.
He was scheduled to visit Saint Peter’s next, but once he met the Raiders’ coaches, toured the facilities and saw the possibilities that lay ahead, he cancelled his New Jersey trip and committed here.
Sargent said he was moved by Doumbia’s “honesty and his eagerness to contribute.
“He’s a mature kid, a humble kid and on the floor, he can give us defensive versatility. I don’t know if we’ve had someone in quite some time who, in terms of size and athleticism, can guard multiple positions like he can.
“Offensively, I believe he could be dynamic if given the chance. I believe he has a lot more in the tank.”
Doumbia said he felt wanted here and said. ‘To me this is a chance to be a part of something much bigger than me. This is a chance to win a championship.”
Talk like that stokes Turman’s pride:
“I promise you; this is a real storybook.”
It’s also part of a dream, Doumbia claimed:
“When I was younger — like maybe 14 — I had a dream of playing basketball for a college team that wore green. And that’s what they wear here.”
But, he was reminded, the school colors of his previous team — Norfolk State — were green and gold, too. Just like Wright State.
“Yeah, Norfolk State wore green,” he said, then grinned:
“But here ... it’s the right green.
“It’s the Wright State.”
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