Ike Nwamu gives Rebels bulkier presence entering exhibition

If he wanted to walk around and pick fights, Ike Nwamu would get few takers. He has the build of a linebacker, and his favorite movie is "Fight Club."

He has limited his weightlifting out of fear he will get too muscular. He's a basketball player, not a bodybuilder, so flexibility is important.

"A big focus is to make sure that I'm not getting too bulky because I put on muscle really easily," said Nwamu, a UNLV senior guard.

The Rebels were a soft team the past two seasons, an admission coach Dave Rice made in the spring. He set out to develop a culture of toughness in the program, and just by bringing in Nwamu, Rice is putting a more intimidating team on the floor.

It will start to show when UNLV hosts Whittier College in an exhibition at 7 p.m. today at the Thomas & Mack Center. If the Poets, who compete in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference in NCAA Division III, are not a lot tougher than their nickname, expect a blowout.

But the score in an exhibition is usually irrelevant. Rice will experiment with player rotations and look for improvement on both ends of the floor. The results start to count when the Rebels open the regular season against Cal Poly on Nov. 13.

Nwamu, a graduate transfer from Mercer, is a probable starter against Whittier along with senior point guard Jerome Seagears, sophomore guard Patrick McCaw, sophomore center Goodluck Okonoboh and freshman forward Stephen Zimmerman Jr.

"Ike brings a lot of things to the table. Experience is one, and toughness is another," Rice said. "He just has a physical presence about him."

Nwamu is 6 feet 5 inches and 215 pounds, but how he's put together is more impressive than the measurements. Based on his dunking ability and overall explosiveness, he would fare well at the NFL Scouting Combine.

"I would definitely have him at tight end," said Rice, playing the hypothetical role of a football coach. "He would be my 'Gronk.'"

But Nwamu's role model is not Rob Gronkowski of the New England Patriots, and the truth is he never cared much for football.

"I played football in seventh grade, and that was it," Nwamu said. "I played a little bit of everything — running back, mostly wide receiver and cornerback, too."

He's also not a brawler, saying he's "kind of an even-keeled guy."

Still, he punches a heavy bag and speed bag on a regular basis, and not because he's training to be a boxer. Jason Kabo, UNLV's director of strength and conditioning, puts Nwamu through workouts geared to maintain strength and increase speed as opposed to gaining upper body mass.

"Instead of the bench press, he's been doing punching bag stuff to work on hand quickness," Kabo said. "He has improved his explosiveness since he's been here."

Rice recently invited NBA scouts for a combine-type event at UNLV. Nwamu did a team-high 20 repetitions on the bench press at 185 pounds. His maximum vertical leap measured 41½ inches, up from 34 inches when he arrived on campus in the summer. His body fat is 4.6 percent, down from 6 percent. Kabo, who monitors the players' diets and checks their measurements regularly, said Nwamu's agility and sprint times are better, too.

Okonoboh was second to Nwamu with 17 bench-press reps, and freshman forward Derrick Jones Jr. is the only Rebels player with a higher vertical leap (42½) than Nwamu, who has had to learn to harness his strength.

"I had problems with being too physical, mostly in high school and early on in college," he said. "I would get a little bit out of control and bump into people. I like to be physical when it's the right time."

Nwamu was Mercer's leading scorer as junior, averaging 15.1 points and shooting 37.2 percent from 3-point range. As a sophomore, he scored 11 points in the Bears' upset of Duke in the 2014 NCAA Tournament.

After he announced his decision to transfer, one of the first calls he received was from UNLV assistant coach Todd Simon.

"I got a lot of recruitment. Pretty much anyone you can imagine reached out to me," said Nwamu, who narrowed his other options to UNR, Oregon and Pittsburgh. "Not Kentucky, but a lot of the major conference schools reached out to me. I wanted to come here and be a part of something special.

"The coaching staff wanted me to bring my experience and pass it on to the other players. Leadership is definitely a big role for me on this team. We've been beating on each other since the summertime, so it will be good to play against somebody else."

Contact reporter Matt Youmans at myoumans@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2907. Follow him on Twitter: @mattyoumans247