Zuby Ejiofor transferred from Kansas to St. John’s in 2023. But somehow Mike Francesa momentarily thought he was college teammates with Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid.
While Embiid also played at Kansas, he competed for just one year in college basketball. That was all the way back in the 2013-2014 season before he became the third overall pick with the Sixers.
And yet when previewing St. John’s chances in the upcoming NCAA Tournament, the Sports Pope talked about Ejiofor moving to the Red Storm so he didn’t have to sit on the bench behind Embiid any longer.
Are we sure it wasn’t Danny Manning or Raef LaFrentz instead?
“Remember, he left Kansas. But that’s a long time ago. And he left Kansas because of Embiid. And Embiid is a different player than Zuby. Embiid, when he’s healthy, is a guy that can score 50 points in the NBA,” Francesa said. “He’s a big-time talent. That’s no big deal that Embiid was over him. I mean, that happens. He came and he found a home and had one of the great careers in the history of St. John’s, which is about him and about Pitino developing him. Did a great job that way.”
Mike Francesa has forgotten more about sports than most people will know in a lifetime. But he’s not exactly a college basketball savant. A few years ago he claimed a 16 seed had never won a tournament game just a year after it very famously happened for the first time.
After the internet had a lot of fun with the comments, Francesa actually admitted in a social media post that he misspoke. The sports talk radio legend said he was thinking of Hunter Dickinson instead of Joel Embiid.
While that’s a lot more understandable, Hunter Dickinson technically arrived in Lawrence as a transfer from Michigan the season after Zuby Ejiofor departed for St. John’s. So even then, the two players he is thinking of never played together. But at least it makes infinitely more sense than inserting a 10-year NBA veteran into the equation.
It’s not exactly his epic introduction to world soccer that will go down as one of the great segments in the history of sports radio, but it’s still an incredible clip nonetheless.
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