When the news broke Sunday that Duquesne University basketball player Sam Ashaolu had been shot in the head and was in critical condition, three of his friends threw some clothes in a car and drove down from Toronto.

They arrived early yesterday morning and visited Mr. Ashaolu at Mercy Hospital. His eyes remained shut but he reacted ever so slightly when one of his friends, Jason Campbell, gently squeezed his hand.

Chaplains came and went. A steady stream of Duquesne teammates visited Mr. Ashaolu in his hospital bed, just a few blocks from the A.J. Palumbo Center, where practices will begin next month.

"I said a couple words of encouragement that we're here for you," Mr. Campbell said. "We're all like family, like brothers. He would have done the same thing for any one of us. He's not the kind of kid who gets into physical confrontations.

"All he ever wanted to do was succeed in life, to make it in school and basketball. There's a lot of fight in him."

Ro Russell, the coach at Toronto Academy Prep School and with an AAU team based in Toronto, has been an adviser, mentor and "whatever Sam needed" for more than 10 years. He, too, made the trip from Toronto.

"Being here wasn't a decision, I had to be here for Sam," he said.

Mr. Russell hastily threw a few belongings together, picked up Mr. Ashaolu's mother, Christine, and raced to Pittsburgh.

"There were so many thoughts," Mr. Russell said. "Everything was going on in my head. I just kept telling myself that I had to get to see him as soon as I could."

Coincidences and contacts converged this past spring to bring the well-traveled, Nigerian-born Mr. Ashaolu, 23, to Duquesne.

"A lot of time you have to go through three people to get one," said Duquesne assistant coach Daryn Freedman, who was the point man in the recruitment of Mr. Ashaolu, a 6-foot-7 power forward. "It's all about the contacts."

The start of the recruiting trail for Mr. Ashaolu goes back to 2000, when Mr. Freedman was on John Calipari's staff at the University of Memphis. Mr. Freedman often checked out talent in Georgia, where he met Linzy Davis, the coach at Community Christian in Stockbridge, just outside Atlanta.

Mr. Davis introduced Mr. Freedman to Mr. Russell at a high school tournament in Georgia. Fast-forward to last spring, a couple of weeks after Mr. Freedman was hired at Duquesne. Mr. Freedman, upon a recommendation from Mr. Russell, went to watch Marvel Waithe, a 6-foot-8 forward, in an open gym workout at Toronto Academy Prep.

Mr. Ashaolu, who had returned home after spending a year at Lake Region State College in Devils Lake, N.D., also was in the gym that day.

"I was looking at this other kid who keeps dunking all over the place, and he can shoot. I thought he was a pro who came back," Mr. Freedman said. "I talked to Ro and he told me it was Sam Ashaolu."

As soon as Mr. Freedman returned to Pittsburgh, he told Duquesne assistant Kim Lewis about Mr. Ashaolu. The name rang a bell for Mr. Lewis, who was an assistant coach at Xavier University in New Orleans when Mr. Ashaolu's older brother, John, played there in 2002. Mr. Freedman called John Ashaolu and he told his younger brother that he should check out Duquesne.

So Mr. Ashaolu and Mr. Russell drove to Duquesne for a one-day visit in April.

"Sam liked it and decided to come here," Mr. Freedman said. "Sam's like a big teddy bear, a soft-spoken kid who just wanted to play basketball and make it in school."

Mr. Achaolu -- who says he is a cousin of former NBA standout Hakeem Olajuwon -- enrolled at Duquesne in the fall and had been playing pickup games with his new teammates in the gym and doing some individual workouts.

The future looked promising.

Prior to his one-year stint at Lake Region State College, Mr. Ashaolu previously attended Trinity Valley Community College in Athens, Texas.

The reasons surrounding Mr. Ashaolu's move from Texas to North Dakota are a bit of a mystery.

Danny Hughes was an assistant at Trinity Valley when Mr. Ashaolu played at the school 70 miles southeast of Dallas and said Mr. Ashaolu left and headed for North Dakota because he wasn't on track to graduate from Trinity Valley in two years.

"I never had any problems with Sam, no one did," Mr. Hughes said. "I think Sam felt as if he needed a change of scenery and he decided to leave for North Dakota."

But before Mr. Ashaolu whisked through two junior colleges in two years, he had already been a certified basketball vagabond.

Mr. Ashaolu attended two high schools in the Toronto area: York Memorial Collegiate and Nelson A. Boylen Collegiate. He did not graduate from either.

That forced Mr. Russell to facilitate the player's move from Canada to Coastal Christian Academy, a college preparatory school in Virginia Beach, Va., in the fall of 2003. He spent one semester there before heading off to Texas.

Sam Ashaolu's younger brother, Olu, is a junior at Christian Life Center High School in Texas and is rated by some scouting services as one of the best five players in the high school class of 2008.

Mr. Russell said his role is important because the father to the Ashaolu children has "been in and out of the family's life, taking care of extended family responsibilities in Nigeria." Christine Ashaolu is a nurse in the Toronto area.

So it is that Mr. Russell, Mrs. Ashaolu, the player's old friends and his new friends have come together in a common theme -- doing what they can for Sam, the person who binds them all together.

Waiting. Hoping. Praying.

"The doctors have told us the swelling has gone down a little and he's been moving around a little and squeezing people's hands," Mr. Russell said. "We know those are just little signs and he has a long road in front of him, but we know Sam's going to do all he can to pull through this."