STARKVILLE — Abdul Ado’s intensity doesn’t stay on the basketball court. Some of his classmates have seen it firsthand — others have been the victims.
Ado is the only Mississippi State basketball player in his football and basketball officiating class. PE 3033 may not be a make-or-break course for any one student’s shot at graduating, but that doesn’t mean Ado doesn’t attack it with 100 percent seriousness. He showed that when a couple of football players entered the class, one of them with a balloon in hand.
The squeaking of the balloon in his hand was too much for Ado — he thought it was disrespectful to the professor. Truthfully, he thought it was, “childish.” He whipped his head around and put an end to it.
“Bro you need to stop,” Ado said. The balloon wasn’t a problem for the rest of the class.”
None of that comes as a shock to Ado’s teammates or coaches, who have come to know Ado as an intense presence whenever and wherever he needs to be, including in MSU’s frontcourt. His exact debut date is to be determined — he may miss the regular season opener with a quad injury — but when it comes, MSU is getting a player coach Ben Howland is incredibly excited about.
MSU’s final preseason action comes Thursday as the Bulldogs host West Florida at 7 p.m. at Humphrey Coliseum.
“I think Abdul’s going to be a huge boost for us because he brings so much competitiveness and toughness,” Howland said earlier this preseason. “He’s all about making the team better. He has all the intangibles and aspects of a player that you like to see from a coaching standpoint.”
Fellow forward Aric Holman said of Ado, “He’s definitely improved a lot of our games, the bigs as a whole because he brings it every day. It’s a game situation every time we go up against him.”
That may be because, up until now, practice opportunities have been the only spotlight Ado’s had.
Ado sat last season after the NCAA did not clear him academically due to transcript issues from his native country of Nigeria; Ado did play some high school basketball in America at Chattanooga, Tennessee’s Hamilton Heights Christian Academy. He admits the time off the floor wasn’t easy, but he could take solace in the fact that he could at least practice with the team.
That got taken away around December. Being in the clearing situation that he was in with the NCAA, he was essentially limited to individual work. Ado took advantage, but it was far from easy.
“I just wanted that moment where I could say I was practicing with the team,” Ado said.
He got that over the summer as his teammates stayed in Starkville to play pickup games with each other. Since then, he’s done nothing but impress his teammates.
“He’s so composed to where you can’t rattle him. He’s willing to do anything to help his team out,” Holman said. “He asks questions, that’s what’s going to make him great. He doesn’t hesitate to ask me or any one on the team questions, what he should do in that situation.”
Fellow big E.J. Datcher said what stands out about Ado is his toughness and, “He’s going to be a really strong leader for the team.”
As soon as he built that momentum, he was back to the sideline.
A matter of days before MSU’s scrimmage with Nebraska, on the final conditioning sprint of practice, Ado suffered a quad injury. Howland was visibly heartbroken about it in announcing it two days before the scrimmage.
“When I got hurt I felt like, I can’t be getting hurt again, I just sat out a whole season,” Ado said.
In the aftermath, he called his mother. She was able to get him back on track and get him focused on his rehabilitation, which Ado says has gone well. Howland said MSU will be cautious with Ado, which would be why he would potentially miss the Nov. 10 season opener against Alabama State.
His mother is the same person that instilled the respect for others in him that caused that balloon confrontation. Even being known as a tough guy in the program, such instances are not Ado’s style — another one of his mother’s teachings.
“It gets to a point where I just have to stand up and say, ‘You have to stop,'” Ado said. “Sometimes you can’t sit and watch.”
Unfortunately for MSU, as an athlete, he’s done plenty of sitting and watching. Sometime this month, that comes to an end.
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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