The first thing E.J. Anosike wants you to know is the story is still being written. Even as his college basketball career winds down, even as he marvels at his journey to date from the Staten Island projects to East Orange, N.J., to Fairfield Conn., to Knoxville, Tenn., to Fullerton, he wants you to know this basketball and difference-making thing has more chapters to be written.

Above all, he wants you to know he’s going to make a difference.

“I was put on this earth for this. I know basketball is one of the biggest blessings in my life, playing the game I love,” he said. “But I want to have a positive impact on the world and help people in Nigeria and the U.S. My family is from Nigeria and I want to go back to the community there and help the village my grandmother grew up in. It took a village to raise me and a lot of faith taking a chance on a kid from East Orange. It gave me a chance to better my life.

“A lot of people didn’t get the chances I had, and that’s something I take seriously. I’m grateful for my duty to help the next generation, because that’s what it’s all about.”

Every year, when his mother would take him back to Nigeria to visit his relatives, Anosike would see what it was all about. He’d see his grandmother wake up early and go to work on a farm. He’d see his aunt head off to work in a local market. He’d see his uncle work as a welder.

The eyes never closed. Anosike never missed anything around him. He took it all in and it put him all-in.

“I saw the lifestyle. It was very humbling,” he said. “It always gave me an appreciation for what I have because there’s always someone who wishes they had what I have.”

Right now, what Anosike has is an enviable situation for himself at this point in his career. He’s wrapping up his second master’s, this one an MBA at Cal State Fullerton. That’s not to be confused with the master’s in agricultural and natural resources economics at Tennessee he finished in nine months.

That came after Anosike needed only three years to earn his bachelor’s in finance and business economics at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., where he graduated with a 3.57 GPA.

“E.J., you have to understand he’s a very smart dude and a very aggressive, typical East Coast, New Jersey dude,” Cal State Fullerton coach Dedrique Taylor said. “The way he carries himself, the way he talks is very aggressive and he plays the game that way.”

This is what Taylor speaks of. Anosike’s aggressive, often-unplayable style made a difference in not only the Titans’ conference title hopes, but the conference statistics. The graduate transfer is No. 2 in scoring in the Big West by an eyelash; his 16.1 points-per-game trails Long Beach State’s Joel Murray by 0.1. He’s fourth in the conference in rebounding (7.7), second in field-goal percentage (51.3%) and fifth in average minutes played (32.3).

Anosike defines the “power” in “power forward.” His 6-foot-7, 232-pound frame comes with a defined athletic foundation that often makes him unguardable. He’s too quick and his game is too sophisticated for many of the conference’s power forwards to handle, and he’s too strong for small forwards to guard. This explains his eight 20-plus point games and seven double-digit rebound games.

The rest of the explanation to Anosike’s success in what will be his sole season at Cal State Fullerton comes from within. Those trips to Nigeria, those days on the basketball court seeing how he was a lot closer to the worst player on the court than the best, they left a mark on the emerging deep thinker. After his senior year of high school in East Orange, Anosike had no scholarship offers. So, he went to a prep school for a year, lost 40 pounds and played with an AAU team in New Jersey to draw attention.

It worked. Sacred Heart called and Anosike took his game to the small Connecticut school. He led the conference in rebounding his junior year, was an all-conference selection, and scored 1,098 points in three seasons. He also wound up on ESPN’s No. 1 Play of the Day on SportsCenter, flushing a put-back dunk.

“I woke up the next day and saw my phone notifications were off the roof,” he said. “Everyone was saying, ‘Look at the TV. Look at the TV. We won that game and I’ll never forget it.”

Anosike spent a year at Tennessee, picking up that master’s before fulfilling another life goal. He had heard of Cal State Fullerton through a friend, former all-Big West guard Kyle Allman Jr. The two grew up playing against each other, and Anosike lost track of his friend’s journey while on his own. He saw Allman’s name when the Titans played Hofstra during his time at Sacred Heart. The extra year of eligibility due to COVID-19 gave Anosike the opening he needed.

“That’s how I knew about Cal State Fullerton. He had a lot of success there,” Anosike said. “Fast forward three years and Coach Taylor reached out to me through the transfer portal. I was familiar with the program because my friend went there and had a lot of success. Everything was organic there. Everything was right.

“I’ve always wanted to live on the West Coast. I spent most of my life growing up on the East Coast. Last year, I was down south. Coach Taylor reached out to me, told me about the school and the team and the good weather. I don’t want to go back to snow. It’s sunny all year round. I said, ‘Coach, I like how that sounds.’ That’s how it happened. I decided to make the transition to the West Coast and it’s been a pleasure. It’s been great, and I love every minute of it here.”

This also explains Anosike’s success. Bringing his East Coast basketball swagger and aggressiveness to the Big West, where everyone can shoot from anywhere on the court opens up matters for Anosike’s power game inside. Waking up, looking outside and seeing sun and palm trees opened up Anosike’s life in ways he always imagined. Ways that go beyond his childhood shoveling snow or following his mother to her native Nigeria.

But ways that stick with him forever.

“This story is still being written and there’s a lot more work to be done,” he said. “There’s a lot more in the future that’s coming. It’s been a great journey so far.”

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