UAF men's basketball head coach Greg Sparling thought the prospective recruit who emailed him during the 2018-19 academic year sounded too good to be true. That was before he met Mawich Kachjaani.
"Honestly, I thought I was getting catfished," Sparling said. "He sent me an email about petroleum engineering, said he was 6-foot-11 at the time. So you never know in this business because you get so many emails."
A half-decade later, Kachjaani, a South Sudan native, is the longest-tenured member of the University of Alaska Fairbanks men's basketball team and is a semester away from a highly coveted petroleum engineering degree. The path to this point has hardly been linear.
Basketball beginnings
Kachjaani started playing basketball in South Sudan around 2010, after he'd already fostered an interest in his future career. But he started to come into his own on the court once he'd moved to Kenya.
"There was a lot of conflict back then," Kachjaani said. "When I left, it wasn't my actual decision to leave. I was more fleeing."
Soccer was Kachjaani's first sport, but he gave hoops a try when someone approached him and recommended he try the sport to take advantage of his 'gift' of height, and from there he began training and taking the sport seriously.
Fittingly, his favorite basketball players — the ones he looks up to and tried to model his game after — are African-born stars who also grew up playing soccer, like Hakeem Olajuwon and Joel Embiid.
So when he got the chance to move to Indianapolis for high school and play and study at the International School of Indiana, Kachjaani was eager to accept the opportunity.
"I was looking forward to it because basketball is bigger here than any other place in the world, I would say. And when I started playing, I fell in love with the game, so I wanted to go where it's being valued the most. And the people I look up to as well, they all play in the U.S."
After leading his state in rebounding, his decision to venture to Alaska to continue his academic and athletic journey was greeted with less support from others. But Kachjaani was resolute in his desire to study petroleum engineering, a specific degree that the University of Alaska Fairbanks offered, so that was the scholarship offer he accepted.
His desire to enter that field stemmed from his childhood in South Sudan, an oil-rich country with its resources largely controlled by foreigners.
"So if I could be one of the kids from the country that has that degree, I felt like I would help a lot more people know how to operate that fuel and be more helpful than having to find people from other places to come do it," Kachjaani said.
While the idea of a 6-foot-11 prospect planning to study petroleum engineering sounded too good to be true to Sparling, he took a self-described leap of faith and bought a plane ticket to Indiana after consulting with a few of his contacts in the region. He watched Kachjaani play and returned impressed shortly after.
Kachjaani became one of Sparling's earlier recruits at UAF and is by far the longest-tenured member of the UAF men's basketball team. He's spent five years at the university, beginning in the fall of 2019 and spanning the Covid-19 pandemic. Both Kachjaani and his coach acknowledge he's grown significantly in that time, both on and off the court, from the raw talent who arrived in Fairbanks.
"He's like the rock star of the team," Sparling said. "He rolls around campus, everybody knows who he is. We go out to community events, and obviously he's the tallest guy, so kids flock to him. He was part of the (2021-22 GNAC) championship run team. He has just grown as a young man."
Nonetheless, from the start, it was clear that the petroleum engineering degree was Kachjaani's primary focus, even above the sport that he fell in love with. That's why he sought out UAF in the first place, after all. And he's stayed the course and is on track to graduate in May with a degree in a rigorous program that only two UAF students graduated from last year.
"His whole goal of coming to UAF is to get into petroleum engineering," Sparling said. "And it's gonna be one of the greatest days the first weekend of May to watch him walk across the (graduation) stage."
On-court improvements
When Kachjaani first considered playing basketball, the inspiration came from something he and friends had seen in a movie and wanted to recreate. But they forgot about that ambition for a few months. When he began training in South Sudan, surely Kachjaani hadn't considered competing in different countries, continents and climates.
One way he's set himself apart is by becoming an above average free throw shooter despite his size and position. Kachjaani boasts a career free throw percentage of 75.4%, and his best percentages have come in the seasons when he's played the most.
He shot 76.9% on 65 free throw attempts as a freshman and is at 81.3% through 16 attempts this season. Fittingly, his career high in points (19) came during the 2019-20 campaign when he made 11-of-12 free throws against Western Oregon.
"As a big guy, you're not expected to make free throws usually," Kachjaani said. "So I want to make sure that I'm not that guy. Like if you watch NBA, there's some guys who, under 10 minutes, they foul him just so the other team can take advantage. So it's something that you fix by just putting in more time and more work."
After a freshman season in which Kachjaani started 29 of the Nanooks' 30 games and led the team in offensive rebounds, his playing time waned the past couple of years. That was especially true as he tackled his most difficult semester of coursework through much of last season and battled knee soreness.
It's helped that Sparling moved the practice time to later in the afternoon this season. Some of the petroleum engineering classes are only offered at a set time in certain semesters, so Kachjaani's basketball schedule often revolves around his coursework.
"You can't get out of sequence in that degree," Sparling said. "You get out of sequence, it pushes you way back, and we knew that going in. And that's why we allowed him to miss so much practice is because he came here for a degree."
The benefits of more consistent practice and time in the weight room can be seen on the court. Now, Kachjaani is finishing his collegiate career in a similar fashion to how he started it. He's averaging his second-most minutes (13.3), points (4.1) and rebounds (2.7) per game of his career but is averaging more points per minute (0.31 compared to 0.27 in 2019-20).
Kachjaani recently posted season-highs of 10 points and seven rebounds in UAF's first conference win of the season, at Seattle Pacific, on Nov. 30. He also posted season-highs of two assists and a block that game.
It takes a lot to fuel a 6-foot-11 college athlete studying fuel for dozens of hours per week. And it shows on road trips with frequent DoorDash orders or ventures to UAF's Wood Center food court where Kachjaani is known to consume any manner of dishes spanning cultures and food groups.
Mawich's journey
Kachjaani is now on the home stretch with courses like reservoir engineering, natural gas engineering, fluid mechanics, differential equations, and calculus I, II and III behind him. After finishing first semester finals, he and the rest of the UAF team will venture to the Island of Hawaii (the Big Island) to play in the Hawaii Hilo Invitational on Dec. 17 and 18.
Kachjaani hasn't been able to return to Africa since moving to the United States nearly a decade ago. His parents, with whom he communicates regularly, still live in South Sudan. And he has a couple of siblings living in a refugee camp in Uganda and going to school there.
And while he initially wanted to use his degree in his home country, he now plans to take a position in Alaska or the Lower 48. He's already interned three times with oil and gas companies.
But first, finals, a trip to Hawaii as part of a final season with the Nanooks, more trips to the dining hall and DoorDash orders, another set of finals and a graduation day that perhaps his coach looks forward to even more than him.
"When he left (Sudan), he left with the clothes on his back and maybe a bag," Sparling said. "And he ended up in Indiana knowing nobody. And to where he's at now is a special story. I mean, it's an unbelievable story."
When Kachjaani looks back and tells that story, it may include nuances of drilling in gas reservoirs and oil recovery methods. He may talk about living in four varied locales within a decade, and perhaps he'll even include a bit on his basketball journey with a hat tip to his coach.
"When I had my ups and downs, there were a lot of people that didn't think I could do what I came here for because it was just a huge struggle," Kachjaani said. "And (Coach Sparling) said that if this is what you want to do, go for it." Contact Gavin Struve at gstruve@newsminer.com or 907-459-7544
