Former Hawkeye center Jack Nunge is a Big Man on Campus at Xavier

CINCINNATI — Rarely does a player of importance transfer out of a high-profile college sports team and receive understanding and genuine best wishes from that team’s fans.

No one in Iowa seemed to begrudge Jack Nunge leaving the Iowa men’s basketball program late last March. How could they with what the 7-footer endured over the previous two years?

Nunge’s father, 53-year-old Dr. Mark Nunge, died suddenly in November 2020, shortly before his son’s 2020-21 season at Iowa was to begin. He was an emergency medical physician at a hospital in Newburgh, Ind.

Last Feb. 25, Nunge suffered a torn meniscus in his right knee and missed the Hawkeyes’ final seven games after averaging 7.1 points and 5.3 rebounds. That was after he tore the ACL in the same knee early in the 2019-20 season.

“This has been an incredibly emotional and difficult year for me and my family,” Nunge said in a written statement last March. “I want to transfer to a school closer to home so I can be near my mother and siblings.”

Xavier University in Cincinnati is twice as close as Iowa City to Nunge’s hometown of Newburgh. Xavier is where he now plays, for the nation’s 21st-ranked team. It’s where he lives in a house with his brother Bobby, a freshman member of Xavier’s practice team. Their mother and sister sometimes stay there when they make the 3 1/2-hour drive northeast from southern Indiana.

It’s been a good new home. Nunge, a fifth-year junior, is playing with vigor. He averages a team-high 12.2 points and 7.2 rebounds on a club with several players who can create their own shots and score. He had a career-high five blocked shots Wednesday in Xavier’s 68-66 Big East Conference home win over Butler.

In the Musketeers’ previous game, Nunge scored 16 second-half points to help his team wipe out a 17-point halftime deficit and win at Creighton last Saturday, 74-64.

Xavier is a basketball school. The Musketeers have reached the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament seven times since 2004, and the Elite Eight on three occasions, most recently in 2017. Its 10,250-seat arena always is sold out or close to it for men’s basketball games.

So, Nunge literally and figuratively is a Big Man on Campus. Xavier fans took to him immediately.

“We play through him on offense a lot because of his ability to shoot, his ability to post,” said Xavier Coach Travis Steele. “Defensively, he’s our anchor. He blocks a lot of shots, he communicates.”

Steele, 40, is a fourth-year head coach who has been in Xavier’s program since 2008.

“We recruited Jack in high school,” Steele said. “I was an assistant coach at the time and really liked him. He chose Iowa. I was down when that happened.

“He entered the transfer portal and I called him right away when I saw his name in there because I knew who he was as a person already from the recruiting process from the first time around, his family and what they are. I knew he was a stud.”

Nunge didn’t make himself available to be interviewed after Wednesday’s game, but said this last week to his hometown paper, the Evansville Courier & Press:

“I’ve been through a lot, learned the game and grown into my body. ... All you can do is continue to battle.”

The Musketeers are 16-5. They beat Ohio State last Nov. 18 in Cincinnati, 71-65. Nunge had 14 points and 14 rebounds.

“They're a ranked team, they're the big state school,” Nunge said afterward. “We knew we wanted to come out and show them what Xavier basketball is all about.”

Xavier is one of five ranked teams in the Big East. So Nunge hasn’t gone to a smaller stage after playing with National Player of the Year Luka Garza and another current NBA player, Joe Wieskamp, last season.

“He’s a winner,” Steele said. “At Iowa, with Fran (McCaffery), they won. He’s been around winning, he knows what it takes. So his impact has been larger than just his play. It’s been great for our culture as well.

“He is a true professional on and off the court. Zero maintenance. He’s just rubbed off in a positive way on everybody else on the team. They all notice how he’s such a process-oriented young man. I think that’s created a more-mature locker room here at Xavier.”

Nunge turns 23 this month. He is engaged to be married in May. He’s working on his MBA. He’s healthy and playing winning basketball for a winning team.

There have to be Xavier Musketeers fans in Iowa this winter.

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