Weyinmi Efejuku has been an enigma of sorts during his years at PC.

The Providence Journal Ruben W. Perez

PROVIDENCE — Last year’s media guide was the first clue.

Questions about college players’ future ambitions have all but become clichés, virtually everyone saying either NBA, or “own my own business,” as though these are the only two options in this big, wide world.

Then there’s Weyinmi Efejuku.

So what are his future plans?

How about wanting to be the president of the United States.

“People have always said I’m a politician,” he says with a smile.

Then again, Efejuku always has been the great enigma.

Starting with his name.

“People used to make fun of it in kindergarten,” he says with another smile.

So what kind of name is it?

“It’s Nigerian,” he says.

“So you’re Nigerian?”

“No,” he says, with still another smile. “I’m Jamaican.”

So maybe it’s only fitting that Efejuku always has been someone who doesn’t easily fit into stereotypes. His career at Providence College has reflected this.

You think of the kid who went to the Hartford Civic Center in his sophomore year against a UConn team full of highly touted “slamma jammas,” and was the best player on the court, scoring 16 points in the second half in a Friars win. You think of all those times he’s exploded through traffic like some discount-store version of Dwyane Wade, a portrait in athleticism, all those times you watched him and thought, here is a big-time talent.

Then you think of all those times when he seems to be drifting through space, a couple of missed shots here, some bad body language there, then all but taking himself out of the game, a snapshot of squandered potential.

The great enigma.

For how many coaches have told him that he doesn’t play hard enough?

“All of them,” he says.

To him, it’s based on the fact that he’s a laid-back personality, not necessarily in his DNA to be a killer on the court.

“I’ve always worked hard at the game of basketball,” he says, “but how I worked didn’t always translate into how I play.”

There’s no question Efejuku has been successful every step along the way of his basketball journey. You don’t get to the Big East without that. He played at Rice, a Catholic school in Harlem, with a big-time basketball tradition, even though he grew up in Queens, only about a jump shot away from St. John’s. He played for the Gauchos, one of the high-profile AAU teams in the city, where one of his teammates was Geoff McDermott, now a teammate at PC.

After Rice, he spent a year at Brewster Academy in Wolfeboro, N.H., where there was no TV and you had to wear a blue blazer and there were only about a dozen black kids and New York seemed as far away as the moon. One of his teammates was Jeff Adrian, now at UConn.

He was recruited by Iowa State, St. John’s, a couple of the Ivies, including Brown, and was shown around on his visit to PC by Ryan Gomes. The word back then was he couldn’t shoot, and when Efejuku first came to PC he wasn’t exactly serenaded by trumpets. He was seen as athletic, a little raw, someone who might even be able to play a little point, but not as any kind of a recruiting coup.

But from the beginning he was better than advertised, scoring 16 points in his first game. He ended the year as the winner of the team’s sixth man award, and the next year averaged 14 points, proof that he was a lot better than most people ever thought he was going to be.

And that’s when Efejuku became the great enigma, a basketball tease.

If he could be so good one night, why couldn’t he be that good every night?

How good could he be if he brought energy and passion every night, the two qualities that had always had seemed to flutter in the win, there one game, not there the next?

“That UConn game two years ago is what I’m capable of,” he says. “I think I can do it. The coaches tell me I can do it.”

His voice trials off.

He is a senior now, and everything’s different.

He is trying to be a pro, and he knows that for that to have a chance to happen he has to bring energy and passion every night. And that’s just on the court. He also has to bring it all the time, whether it’s working out, eating well, living well.

It’s what he learned last summer, the business side of the game. What he learned from working out with pros, listening to them, learning from them. And what he came away with was that it’s a full-time thing, not just what you do on a basketball court. He learned that it’s serious business, and that the opportunity to get there is a window with a small opening. And if he first learned in high school that basketball had the power to change his life, take him places he never thought he could go, that lesson is now intensified.

“Everyone wants to be in the NBA,” he says, “but not many people work hard to get there.”

So the game is more important now, and he knows what’s at stake. Knows that the basketball woods are full of guys who almost made it. And he knows his personality on the court must be different than it is off the court, that smiling and being friendly off it is one thing, but doesn’t pay the bills.

“I have to do it every day,” he says.

So it begins.

His last year at PC.

Playing for his basketball future.

And if basketball doesn’t work out?

Well, there’s always that little thing in the media guide, right? The one where all those fans at both Pittsburgh and West Virginia used to yell at him, “President? President of what?”

Weyinmi Efejuku smiles again.

“Now that Obama got elected, that little quote in the media guide doesn’t seem so far-fetched.”

breynold@projo.com