Wake Forest Athletics
Wake Forest Traditions
 Darius Songaila Adjusts to Life and Basketball in the U.S.By Jay Reddick During his year and a half in America, Darius Songaila has certainly gotten his share of American culture. All sides of it. Put it this way: his favorite television show is "Jerry Springer." "Last year in prep school on weekends, there wasn't much to do," says the Deacs' Lithuanian freshman, defending himself. "That show was on in the mornings, and the basketball team would watch it. I thought it was really funny stuff, very American. We don't have anything like that in Lithuania." Yes, Songaila is far from your average freshman. That includes his on-court exploits, where he had averaged 10.6 points and 5.8 rebounds a game through the exam break, leading the large corps of Deacon first-year players. The last three years of Songaila's life have seen their share of ups and downs. In 1996 and '97, he played on the Lithuanian junior national team, where he said honing his skills against Europe's best was his greatest thrill as an athlete. And he discovered during that time that not only did he love basketball, but it could determine his future. He began to make plans to come to America for school and continue his athletic and academic career. In 1996 came an incident that he says helped him become a man. His father, a builder, fell from the third story of a construction site and broke his back, crippling him. Eighteen-year-old Darius and his 23-year-old sister spent lots of time with their father in the hospital and helped ease his transition back into home life. "It was very hard," Songaila said. "I grew up a lot at that time." In January of 1997, Songaila had his own ordeal, though nothing as bad as his father's. Playing in an exhibition game, Songaila pump-faked a defender so hard that the other player leaped and came down squarely on Songaila's shoulder, breaking it. "I was in a cast for a month, then it was several more weeks before I could play again," Songaila said. "It wasn't fun, I tell you that much." Through it all, Songaila stayed true to his two great loves, basketball....and fishing? We told you he wasn't your average freshman. "My home is on a river, and that is where I learned to love fishing," Songaila said. "I don't fish there much anymore, when I am home, but there are lakes a couple of hours away where I like to go. It's very relaxing." Once he rehabilitated the shoulder (no word on whether casting with a rod and reel was part of his training regimen) the 6-foot-8 forward had enough natural hoops ability to come to the States and play immediately at New Hampton (N.H.) Prep School. In fact, he averaged 24 points and 11 rebounds for the Huskies, attracting the attention of Dave Odom, who had gotten Rafael Vidaurreta from the same school one year earlier. "(Odom) said they needed some scoring inside," Songaila said, " and I thought I could bring it to the team. I didn't know too much about any colleges, but I liked Wake Forest because of the small campus. It's everything in one place, you know everybody, and you're not going to get lost." Songaila has given Wake Forest all that and more, and earned starts in six of the Deacs' first eight games. Still, he knows he has plenty of room for improvement. "I have to worry about staying in control, but really, I have to keep working on all my skills," Songaila said. "I'm not perfect; I'm not even that good yet." One pleasant surprise for Deacon fans has been Songaila's ability -- and willingness -- to become a ballhandler, and create his own shot by slashing to the hole from the wing. That ability, Songaila said, came from a time in high school when he got to live the dream of many American big men. He got to become a guard. "There was one part of my life where I stopped growing," Songaila said. "I had usually played the four (power forward), but when I stopped growing, I played two-guard or small forward and had to adjust to ballhandling and doing guard stuff. Then I started growing again, but the ballhandling stayed with me." The one area Odom has stressed the most with the Lithuanian is his tendency to be foul-prone at inopportune moments. Songaila has committed more than his share of fouls in eight games, but the timing is what sometimes gets Odom steamed. "We want to keep him foul-free, to give him a chance to play," Odom said. "He keeps getting fouls that I don't see, away from the ball with meaningless amounts of contact. If he's going to foul, it needs to mean something, saving a basket or stopping momentum." That's not to say Odom hasn't been pleased with the player Bob Gibbons called the best to enter the ACC this season. "He's very athletic and offensive-minded, something we've needed," Odom said. "He's improving as a passer and a decision-maker, and he certainly works hard. He's got the whole package, we've just got to keep him out there."
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