How did USC and Vincent Iwuchukwu find a way to get the game-changing player back on the court after he suffered cardiac arrest during preseason practice?
The day his heart stopped suddenly and without explanation, Vince Iwuchukwu wasn’t feeling like himself.
Then, midway through that July workout, Iwuchukwu came down with a rebound and something didn’t look right to Eric Mobley. The assistant coach watched closely as Iwuchukwu ran down the court in transition. He saw something in the freshman’s eyes that worried him. When the team broke for water, Mobley shared his concerns with Enfield, who went to check on Iwuchukwu.
As Mobley laid Iwuchukwu down on the Galen Center sideline more than 30 years later, he couldn’t help but think of that moment and of Gathers.We’re offering L.A. Times subscribers special access to our best journalism. Thank you for your support.“Things were happening so fast,” Mobley said. “I was just yelling at him and shaking him and slapping him in the face, like, ‘Stay with the light!’ You could tell he was fighting. You could tell he could hear me, but it was like he couldn’t do anything.
As the trainers worked to save Iwuchukwu’s life, Mobley tried desperately to wake him. His message somehow got through to Iwuchukwu, who describes feeling like he was in “a deep slumber, like in the void.” As Yonamine pushed a button, deploying the AED, Iwuchukwu’s eyes opened wide. He let out a loud, gasping wail.
“I just kept following that voice. He was saying, ‘Vince, come back! Come back! Come back!’ Then I heard, ‘Vince, don’t die on me!’ And I was like, ‘What the hell are you talking about?”He went through a bevy of tests during four days in the hospital to determine why. But there were no concrete explanations to be found, he said.
Washington State guard Justin Powell tries to shoot in front of USC forward Vincent Iwuchukwu on Feb. 2 in Los Angeles. Soccer wasn’t an option when they moved again — this time to Texas, the summer before he started high school. Vince was too skinny and too long for football, he figured. So he gave basketball another try, hoping it would stick.
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