Baybe Fights for Everything He Has

By: D. Scott Fritchen

His name is Abayomi Iyiola, and the 6-foot-10, 220-pound sixth-year senior he might be one of the hidden treasures in the Big 12 Conference this season. But before the native of Ibadan, Nigeria, journeyed from college to college before reaching the Little Apple this summer, he attended Greenforest-McCalep (Ga.) Christian Academy – playing for Coach Ryan – and the AAU Georgia Stars.

And nobody could pronounce his name —Abayomi (uh-BYE-uh-mee) Iyiola (ee-zhee-OH-luh).

Coach Ryan said it was time to give him a nickname. He nicknamed him "Baybe."

"I'm not going to lie to you, I hated the name at first," Baybe says. "Coach Ryan made the name out of my first name — "Bay" — and then he put a "b-e" at the end. I have no idea where he got the "e" from. He said it like "Bay-bay." I said, 'What's Baybe?' He said, 'That's your name.'

"I said, 'I don't like it.'"

The Georgia Stars played in a AAU tournament in Virginia. Everybody yelled, "Baybe! Baybe! Get the rebound!" Then Baybe hit the game-winning shot, and everybody chanted, "Bay-bay! Bay-bay! Bay-bay!"

"Since then," he say, "everybody has called me by my nickname."

Baybe.

• • •

It was a five-mile walk to elementary school. There are many things that Baybe recalls about his childhood in Ibadan, Nigeria, and this is one of them. Baybe has four siblings — Semiu, Akim, Omolara and Opeyemi. His parents, Lasisi and Alirat did the best they could. But owning an automobile was somewhat rare in his district. And so Baybe walked five miles to and from school each day. School began at 7:30 a.m., so he sometimes left before daybreak — an hour hike to school. The teacher delivered whoopings for any student who arrived late. Baybe was always punctual.

"You didn't want to get into trouble," Baybe says.

Ibadan has a population of more than 3.5 million and is the third-largest city by population in Nigeria.

"It's like you have to fight a war every day — not a real war, but you have to fight for everything," he says. "It's really tough. My parents had to work two or three jobs for us to be OK. I remember most of the time my father would work late nights so he could get enough money to give us to go to school the next morning."

Baybe had soccer. Everybody played soccer. You started playing soccer soon after you could walk. And you continued it on throughout your life. Two of Baybe's brothers — Semiu and Akim — played soccer in Nigeria. Baybe figured to be on a similar athletic path. Then he began to grow. And he grew some more. And some more. And a man finally told his father, "Perhaps your son should try playing basketball." But Baybe refused. He did not want to play basketball.

"'No, I'm not playing basketball,' I told them," Baybe says. "Except we called it 'handball.' I said, 'I'm not playing handball.' Then one day, my dad tricked me and took me to watch a basketball game. Then he tried to make me play the game.

"I love to challenge myself. So I did everything I could to learn the sport."

He was 12.

"And I just kept getting better and better and better," he says. "Now I'm getting better because you learn every single day. You get 1% better every single day."

• • •

Baybe stands inside the team theater room at the Ice Family Basketball Center on October 13. He wears a black hoodie with "ELEVATE" written in white lettering below a white Powercat logo. Mere hours have passed since the Big 12 Conference announced its preseason rankings for the 2022-23 men's basketball season.

K-State is picked 10^th. The Big 12 poll flashes across a flatscreen by the men's basketball locker room.

The Wildcats host Washburn in an exhibition game on November 1 and then open their first season under head coach Jerome Tang against UTRGV on November 7 at Bramlage Coliseum.

"To be honest, I don't like the way they put us last," Baybe says. "That's the last thing I want to see — for us to be at the bottom of the list. We have something to fight for. We just have to make sure we prove the rankings wrong and use that as motivation in practice every day and just go hard.

"This is my last year, so I have to put everything I have out there every night and make sure we win the game."

• • •

Baybe was 15 when he left Nigeria. He had never before been on an airplane. He hugged his parents tight. His mother prayed over him.

"The first thing she told me at the airport was, 'You have to make us proud,'" he says. "I'm the first in my family to ever get on the plane and I'm the first in my family to ever come to the United States, and I'm the first in my family to ever graduate from college outside of the country.

"I promised that I'd make everyone in my family proud."

The airline running out of Ibadan Airport is called "Air Peace." And a certain peace rose from Baybe in knowing he was doing as God intended for his life. He arrived at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and stayed with an uncle for two nights before moving onto the campus of Greenforest-McCalep Christian Academy, about 20 miles west of Atlanta in nearby Decatur.

Baybe arrived as a wide-eyed 6-foot-7 talent with just three years of basketball experience under his belt. He helped Greenforest to a 57-7 record and back-to-back Class A Private School State Championships in 2016 and 2017 as a junior and senior. He averaged 9.7 points and 4.7 rebounds as a junior, and 10.2 points, 9.3 rebounds, 1.1 blocks, 1.0 assists and 1.0 steals as a senior.

"I took a lot of pride in representing Nigeria," he says. "When you go to another country, whatever you do, people won't say, 'Baybe did this.' They'll say, 'A Nigerian did this.' Everything I did and everything I do, I make sure I do the right things to put honor on my name and on my country. I always want to do the right thing and work hard."

Baybe decided to begin his college career at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida. He averaged 10.1 points on 51.9% shooting to go along with 6.2 rebounds and 0.7 blocks in 19.3 minutes per game en route to Atlantic Sun All-Freshman honors. As a sophomore, he averaged 10.8 points on 48.4% shooting with 7.6 rebounds, 1.2 blocks and 1.0 steals in 22.9 minutes while starting all 31 games. He had 19 points and five rebounds against No. 3 Duke.

Deciding to elevate his game, he transferred to Arkansas, where he sat out and redshirted the 2019-20 season in accordance with then-NCAA transfer rules. Then in the summer of 2020, he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee and played in just one game during the 2020-21 season following surgery and months of rehabilitation.

It became apparent that Baybe needed to transfer again in order to get back onto the court, as Arkansas' roster was loaded with talent and experience. Baybe landed at Hofstra and last December helped the Pride to an 89-81 win at No. 24 Arkansas. Baybe had 18 points and 14 rebounds against his former team. He averaged 7.1 points on 63.2% shooting with 7.1 rebounds and 0.6 blocks while playing in 28 games.

Overall, he has played in 92 games with 64 starts between Stetson, Arkansas and Hofstra, averaging 9.3 points and 6.9 rebounds in 20.3 minutes per game and has 16 career double-doubles.

Upon earning a degree in business from Hofstra, Baybe contemplated playing professional basketball.

"My mom told me, 'How about you try and get your master's degree before you start to play pro?'" Baybe says. "So I thought about it for two days and put my name in the transfer list. Then coaches began calling me. I spoke with Coach Tang. We just clicked. And here I am today.

"I chose K-State because of how Coach Tang talked to me. I'd been in school for a long time, so I knew what I wanted, and know what I want. Coach Tang told me the truth and that's what I wanted to hear. He said, 'We really need you to come here to play for us and you have to work hard. You give us what we want every day on the floor and you'll be able to compete and play the game that you love.' I'm so happy to finish my career with Coach Tang. I love him as a person and as a coach. I just love the way he does things."

Baybe hasn't returned to Nigeria. He won't return, not until he receives his master's degree in finance at K-State. He made a promise to his mother.

"I was supposed to go home this year, this summer, but my mom told me she'd like for me to come back home with my master's," he says. "So hopefully, next summer I'm going home with my master's. She can't wait to see that. I'll be the first person in my entire family to have a master's.

"Right now, for me to make them proud, is for me to get my master's and go play pro. I really want to help my family. I know they're at home. We don't have money. We don't have a lot of stuff. We're not starving, but things are hard. I just want to make them proud.

"Everything I do, I do it for them."

Highlights don't lie. Baybe can be a special talent. He's athletic. He can get to the rim in so many different ways. He can operate in traffic. He has post moves inside the paint. He can sense double teams and find the open player. He can kick the ball back out to a guard. He can rebound. He can block shots.

He'll look pretty good in purple and white.

"I'm so excited," he says. "The first thing I heard is that the fans are crazy each and every night. I go the football game, and man, I see the fans, and the fan base is so huge. I'm looking forward to seeing everybody every night.

"I want to win. I've seen Coach Tang to the NCAA Tournament many times. I just want to go to the tournament and I know Coach Tang has the experience to take us there. We have to be coachable. We just have to listen to him."

Just like he listened to his parents growing up.

"I listen to them so much," he says. "I listened to them and made sure I did something to please them. When they told me to do something, even before they told me to do something, I'd get it done. Even now, I get on the phone with my mom, if I called her right now, her first words would be, 'I'm so proud of you.' Every single day, every single day."

Baybe appreciates how he can talk with Tang as well.

"Coach has been great and invites us to his office, and asks how your family is doing," he says. "It's a quality I see in Coach Tang that I haven't experienced before. For a coach to invite you to his office, and ask anything that doesn't relate to basketball, it makes it — he wants the best for us on the basketball court and off the basketball court.

"I just want make sure that I make my last year of college basketball count and I just want to make sure at the end of the season we accomplished a lot of stuff."

He pauses.

"The only thing that rings in my head every morning when I wake up is, 'Win the championship.'"

What has he learned most about himself during his journey?

"I've learned a lot about myself," he says. "I've learned….that's a tough question. Can we come back to that question?"

And Baybe peers ahead.

Already, he's learned plenty.

• • •

The name "Abayomi" is Nigerian. Abayomi means, "My enemies tried to mock me but God didn't allow them." In Egyptian, Abayomi means, "Bringer of happiness."

"I believe my parents gave me my name for a reason," Baybe says. "I thank my parents forever because without them I'm not the man I am today. All their discipline and kind words, their prayer, it worked. It pushes me today. I want to take good care of them. I'm really blessed.

"Wherever I go, God always puts on the light for me. I'm thankful to be here, and thankful to play for Coach Tang, and thankful to be a part of K-State men's basketball, and for my life, and for my family here."

There will be a time when Baybe says goodbye to Manhattan. Asked whether he hopes to pursue the NBA or overseas professional basketball, he replies, "God knows best."

"Wherever I go, I have to work hard, but God has a plan for everything in life," he says. "It would be a dream come true."

His smile brightens up the room.

"Bay-bay! Bay-bay! Bay-bay!"

You can already hear the chants ring out across Bramlage Coliseum.

Kansas State University Athletics

Players Mentioned

Abayomi Iyiola

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