Scholar Stories: Michigan Slugger Nwogu's Early Scholarship Offer Was Academic
1/29/2020 10:00:00 AM | Baseball, Features
Continuing the series that began in 2016-17, each Wednesday MGoBlue.com will highlight a Michigan student-athlete and their academic pursuits. These are our Scholar-Athlete Stories, presented by Prairie Farms.
By Steve Kornacki
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Jordan Nwogu said he received a scholarship offer from the University of Michigan as a sophomore. That isn't unusual for elite performers like Nwogu, the potent leadoff hitter on last season's College World Series runner-up team and a preseason All-America pick this year.
But what's unusual is that Nwogu's offer was for an academic scholarship.
"It was a dream come true," said Jordan. "I always wanted to come here, and I got the scholarship after my sophomore year (at Ann Arbor Pioneer High) at a (University of Michigan) engineering camp.
"That was an unbelievable moment. I remember hugging my parents after that and how happy they were. That was like a dream. It took a little bit of a load off my parents."
Nwogu (WO-goo) is one of the most intriguing student-athletes the Wolverines have had in recent years. He's a computer science engineering major who turned down football scholarships to Brown of the Ivy League, Air Force, Kent State and Eastern Michigan.
He was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, to Nigerian parents, physician mother Uche George-Nwogu and engineer father Okey Nwogu, who both work at Michigan. Ann Arbor became home for Jordan just prior to entering kindergarten, and he has an older brother, Nile, and a younger brother, Kenan.
Jordan later applied for a LEAD Scholars Program scholarship from the University and also was selected to receive that.
"It's cool, and I'm really blessed," said Nwogu.
He said "time management" is the key to his study habits.
"The resources we get here are amazing," said Nwogu, glancing across the street from Fisher Stadium to the Ross Academic Center that serves Michigan student-athletes. "I talk to my tutors and my advisor, Ashley Korn, who has been a huge help. I love her, and working with her is like working with a friend. She helped me get my feet on the ground here."
His full name is Jordan Chijioke George-Nwogu, which led to the "J.G." nickname first pinned on him in elementary school. To make name recognition easier, he simply goes by his first name and father's last name.
"My parents told me my middle name means 'God is in charge of creation,'" said Jordan, citing the Nigerian dialect translation. "My mom is a physician (at U-M Hospital) and my dad's a research scientist in the Naval Architecture (and Marine) Engineering department. My dad used to be a professor."
He often goes home, just a few miles down State Street from campus, to pick his father's brain with school projects and spend time with Mom.
"With my dad," said Jordan, "the help is just unending. Like this semester, I can't tell you how many times I went home to work on a lab or project to get his help because he's so adaptable. I'm in computer science, and in the classes I'm taking, he shouldn't know anything about them. But he researches what I'm doing and picks up on things really well.
"With Mom, it's the constant support, and just supporting me in any decision I want to make. I was a walk-on in baseball and they wanted me to focus on academics, but they supported me in pursuing it. I can tell my mom just about anything, and I love spending time with her. We have similar personalities, laughing together."
A pair of programming classes have been his favorites.
"They've been really hard," said Nwogu, "but very rewarding. I feel like I can program now, and I did enjoy coding, which had been difficult."
Nwogu explained computer science engineering: "It's based around programming and I take computer architecture classes. Most of the classes I've taken in C++ (a general purpose programming language) that you can apply to a lot of different languages. The computer architecture is focused on the programming.
"If I were a computer engineer, it would be based on the RAM (Random Access Memory) and all the different type of memory, micro-processor. But computer science is the interface and that kind of thing versus what else we're required to learn."
Nwogu likely has as professional baseball career ahead of him. But when he's done playing, what does he see himself doing with his academic training?
"I definitely think it would be cool to work for a software company as a software engineer," said Nwogu. "Amazon, being part of those type of companies would be rewarding and definitely real cool.
"Also, I've thought about working in baseball front office stuff. I've heard a little about it from some of the (pro baseball) scouts. Coding is a lot of the new wave. A lot of it has to do with analytics stuff. That would be cool, and I could be around baseball, too."
Wolverine head coach Erik Bakich and his entire coaching and support staff emphasize applying analytics to baseball. He said Nwogu and Jimmy Kerr, an industrial operations engineering major who led the Wolverines with 15 homers and 64 RBI in 2019 and is now playing in the minors for the Detroit Tigers, study that at a different level.
"We're right in the middle of this brand new world with tech and data," said Bakich, "and we have coaches who are bilingual so that they can understand that and speak it in simple language to our players. But Jordan is different, and Jimmy Kerr also was a great example of that. You can go deeper with them. You can talk about kinematic firing sequences and key performance indicators in terms of plate decisions. When we discuss metrics that only data scientists would normally be talking about, we understand just how smart these guys are and the scope of Michigan student-athletes.
"They don't have any problem looking at graphs and understanding what the dots are on the 'X' and 'Y' axis, and understanding taking a CSV file from a TrackMan dataset, and understanding how we coded it to get the graphs that we got. They speak that coding, advance computer and data science language as well. So, J.G. is working on things beyond most college baseball players."
What has that meant to Nwogu's performance?
"Starting from even in high school," he said, "and going to video. Video is really important in baseball because if you're doing something wrong, video will tell you. You can't feel it until you see it.
"The advancement from the stuff Bakich has brought in, and what Coach (Michael) Brdar did. It's like playing efficiency and the kinetic motion. If you have one body part out of place, it's important. A lot of people think it makes them overthink, but it's really interesting. I think that it helps because you have to know what you're doing wrong before you can fix it. And there's all the exit-velocity, launch-angle stuff, that's all really helpful."
Nwogu connects seamlessly with it through his scientific mind.
At 6-foot-3 and 235 pounds, he was a football defensive end and tight end at Ann Arbor Pioneer. He's an imposing figure when he digs in at the plate, and batted .321 with 12 homers and 46 RBI to finish in the top five on the team in those categories. He tied for second with 58 runs, made good on 16 of 18 stolen base attempts for the third most, and led the team with four triples.
That's brought preseason All-America honors from Perfect Game and Collegiate Baseball, which Nwogu finds rewarding.
"It definitely is," he said. "It's a testament to all the hard work we've put in, but I'm trying not to put a lot of backbone to it just because it doesn't really mean that much until you actually do it at the end of the season.
"So, I just want to get back to Omaha again. That's the main goal for this year."
The Wolverines know what a hard road it is to make the eight-team field. It includes making the NCAA Tournament (which they nearly missed in 2019), winning a regional and then winning a super-regional.
"It's doable, though," noted Nwogu. "We got there last season."
This season begins Feb. 14, when Michigan plays Vanderbilt -- which defeated them in the final game of the best-of-three CWS championship series -- in the MLB4 Tournament in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Nwogu was primarily the designated hitter in 2019, but will start in the outfield as a junior. That ties into the area where he feels he's made the most development in the offseason under the tutelage of volunteer assistant Brdar, who recently accepted a minor league position with the San Francisco Giants.
"I love Coach Brdar," said Nwogu. "He's the favorite coach I've ever had. I can attest just about all my growth to Michael Brdar. I can't say enough. During the end of the summer and into the fall, he worked me every day defensively -- whether it was hitting me fly balls, talking to me, teaching me things I didn't even know. He's helped me so much as a player, and as a person, too.
"Coach (Nick) Schnabel also has helped with mindset things, approach. All our coaches here -- nobody else's coaches compare. They care for us as people and not just as players."
Nwogu led a powerful hitting team with both a .557 slugging percentage and .435 on-base percentage, and was All-Big Ten first team and an ABCA All-American second team pick.
ESPN analyst Wes Clements, during the NCAA Super Regional deciding game at UCLA, told viewers:
"Nwogu is one of these athletes ... who can absolutely fly. But when he stands in the box, you can't breathe until he's out because any time, any pitch, he could leave the yard just like that."
And he looks to be even better in 2020.
"My whole overall game has improved," said Nwogu, "but defense especially. At the plate, I just made a couple adjustments. I raised my hands and it's helping me pull the ball. I struggled a little bit last year with that.
"And I'm working on a lot of things, like plate discipline. It'll be good to face our pitchers throwing in the preseason. That's what really gets us ready for the season -- live hitting -- and our pitchers are the best in the country."
Nwogu says he has it all at Michigan -- top-flight academics and baseball.
