Colleges

Pressure defines her

FSU's Ganiyat Adeduntan excels on the court, in her studies.

By BRIAN LANDMAN
Published March 18, 2006

Florida State senior forward Ganiyat Adeduntan knows there could come a time when she will need to make the shot or grab the rebound for her team to advance in the NCAA Tournament.

A pressure-packed situation, to be sure.

Yeah, well, not as much as the life-and-death situations she trains for to be a nurse.

"Personally, I'd rather go against somebody in a basketball game," said Adeduntan, who will help lead the No.6-seeded Seminoles (19-9) against No.11 Louisiana Tech (26-4) in the NCAA opener tonight in Denver. "In nursing, you have to know what you're doing because a patient's life is in your hands."

For part of the current semester, she has been working at a progressive care unit and is responsible for drawing blood, dispensing medication and always staying alert to possibilities and acting if need be.

That's not to say she doesn't approach basketball seriously.

She does.

"When she's nursing, she's doing that and when she's on the court, she's doing that," senior guard LaQuinta Neely said. "If you saw G on the court, you couldn't tell if she had a hard night or if she was gone from 8 in the morning 'til practice time at the hospital."

Adeduntan has learned to manage her time, a job any student-athlete has to do but few do as well as she. Not many of her peers, male or female, are getting up at 5:30 a.m. to get to the hospital for the day, be refreshed enough to go at it for a few hours at practice in the afternoon and then study.

"It doesn't leave any room for procrastinating," said Adeduntan, 21.

"Other nursing students have come to me and said, "I don't know how she does it. I couldn't do it,' " coach Sue Semrau said. "And you never hear about it from her. She never complains. She just puts her head in a book on road trips, she gets away to study when she needs to and she never complains about it. She's excited about her career so it gives her the passion to do the work."

The daughter of a vascular surgeon, Adeduntan has a 3.5 GPA. But her work ethic off the court, a standard for her teammates to emulate, is mirrored by what she's done on it.

The 6-foot-1 Adeduntan (pronounced addah-dunt-tin), despite a slump midway through the ACC season that coincided with a bruised knee, has scored in double figures in seven-straight games. She has led the team in scoring 12 times and averages 12.5 points and 5.1 rebounds.

"The thing about Ganiyat (pronounced gahn-nee-yacht) is she's so multidimensional," Georgia Tech coach MaChelle Joseph said. "She can shoot the 3, she can take you off the dribble, but the thing that's been really impressive about her this year is her rebounding. She has really gotten involved rebounding. ... She has definitely been a key contributor to them getting things going in a positive direction at Florida State."

Semrau said Adeduntan isn't just an accomplished player and student, she has a "magnetic" personality and exuberance for what she's doing, no matter how daunting it may seem, that inspires those around her. "When you have someone like that, good things follow," Semrau said.

"In basketball, there's hard times," Adeduntan said, "but I've always played because I was having fun."

[Last modified March 18, 2006, 02:30:29]