UAAP: 'African Tiger' Karim Abdul stands tall amidst physical play

The first time this season Karim Abdul played against the Ateneo de Manila University Blue Eagles, he was held to just six points on five shot attempts. When their round two meeting came, with a Final Four berth on the line, there was no way he was going to have another poor outing.

Instead, last Wednesday, the Cameroonian center, the University of Santo Tomas' own "African Tiger," finished with a game-high 25 points on 11-of-18 shooting, as last season's finalists, the UST Growling Tigers, ousted the defending champs 82-74.

It was Abdul who set the tone for the game, banging in 19 of his points in the first half. He also hauled in nine rebounds, and denied Blue Eagle incursions into the lane with five rejections. Looking back at his round one performance, which UST lost 57-61, it was almost like it had been a different player who had tallied those numbers.

But while Abdul is an imposing figure on the court, the 6'6" center revealed to GMA News Online that after every game, he's all banged up with bruises all over his body.

Asked to compare basketball in the Philippines in his west central African home country Cameroon, Abdul said that basketball here sometimes gets too physical, especially for players who are perceived to be the strongest members of a team.

According to Abdul, "It intensifies when you are a foreigner, because they say you are stronger, you can take it, you have strong genes. Sometimes this extra physicality goes to the point where I end up being hurt or bruised. I get it every game I play. I always get fouled.

"Whenever I finish a game, I'm really banged up. I just want to go for a massage and then sleep and attend to my bruises. There's no game that I've played here without really being hurt," he added.

That said, Abdul believes this isn't done out of racism. Instead, it's more of a strategy to make the opposing player angry, to tempt him to make an unsportsmanlike move that might get him suspended. Abdul knows just how effective it is too. In his rookie year, he sat out one game late in the season for accumulating two unsportsmanlike fouls, and it cost him a chance at MVP, as league rules disqualify suspended players from post-season awards.

In fact, tough play on the court aside, Abdul is pretty grateful for the way Filipinos have treated him. “I haven’t encountered racists here," he said. "Sometimes some person in the street would shout, ‘Negro,’ but I just take it as a lack of education. Actually, I’ve been treated like a privileged person here.

"I have Filipino friends who take me like their own family. Others look up to me. I even heard someone say, after we beat Ateneo this second round, 'I wanna be black because of Karim,'" he added.
 
 

Long journey to España

Back in Cameroon, Abdul's family was into farming. “My late grandfather has a big farm so we grew up learning how to farm. We grew plantains, bananas, cassava, groundnuts, sweet potatoes, mango trees, plumb trees, tangerine trees. We weren’t well-to-do but we had enough,” he said.

"It wasn't so easy to come [to the Philippines], unexpected things happened, but with the grace of God, it became possible."

While Abdul is a dominant force on the court now, the truth of the matter is he really only started playing basketball in high school, back when he was enrolled at the Santa Clara International Academy in Cogeo, Antipolo.

“After I enrolled in my first semester in UST, I played in the intrams and that's when a coach asked me to come and try out in the school team,” said the 21-year-old marketing student. Having lived in the Philippines since 2009, he already knows how to speak Filipino, one of the four languages he speaks, aside from English, French, and a Cameroonian dialect.

Abdul says he's gotten used to living in the Philippines, even having learned to cope with the infamous floods in the UST area during the rainy season. He even knows his way around Metro Manila better than some Filipinos, having embraced public transportation like the LRT and jeepneys.

“When I'm in the LRT, there are some people who will whisper, ‘Oh that’s Abdul…’ But there are [also] some people who are like, ‘ABDUL!’ They will shout, ‘Abdul!’

“I like it when someone comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, are you Karim?’ I mean quietly. But when someone shouts my name that’s when I get a bit irritated because I don’t want people to look at me.”

He's even incorporated Filipino food into his training regimen. "I like drinking bulalo the night before a game. It helps you recover [from practice]. You drink bulalo and you go to sleep," he said.

"I also eat balut after working out. When I work out hard, I eat maybe three to six baluts, rich in protein." He explained though that as a basketball player, he tries to take less white rice. “In my place, I cook brown rice because it's high in fiber. Then I try as much as possible to eat vegetables, then fish, or chicken."
 
 

Staying focused

It's been an up-and-down ride for Abdul and the rest of the UST Growling Tigers. They started strong with a 3-1 card, but they lost starting shooting guard Jeric Teng to a shoulder injury early on, resulting in a 1-4 stretch that included that loss to Ateneo, for a sub-par 4-5 record.

Part of that was due to inconsistent play from Abdul, as he normed just 13.57 in the first seven games, including three outings where he scored just six markers.

However, Abdul cranked up the intensity in the second round (19.14 points in round two), and his return to his old dominant form helped UST finish on a 4-1 surge, enough to get them the fourth seed in the Final Four.

According to him, his goal was to "stay focused and calm" and to "not get discouraged," words of advice that clearly worked.

“I always think of what I'm there for, what my job is, what my role in the team is," Abdul said. "I also think of my kid, so that helps me stay focused and calm through the game.”

Abdul, who cites Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant as his inspiration, will need that focus against the top-ranked National University Bulldogs, who beat UST both times in the elimination round. He'll likely spend most of the game matched-up against another Cameroonian center, Bulldog Emmanuel Mbe, who has always played Abdul tough.

Well aware that the odds are not in his side's favor, they'll need to beat NU twice to book a return trip to the Finals, Abdul is nonetheless confident. Just like any tiger, he'll be ready to pounce come game day. - AMD, GMA News