By CNN
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When University of Southern California basketball player Vince Iwuchukwu came down from a rebound, the team’s assistant coach noticed something was not right with the 7-footer.
The team took a water break and USC assistant coach Eric Mobley called over the freshman forward and asked if he was OK. It was more than 45 minutes into a summer practice on July 1, 2022.
Within minutes, Iwuchukwu was dizzy and getting dizzier. As he sat down to take a sip of water, everything went dark, he said.
Iwuchukwu went into cardiac arrest, which happens when electrical disturbances cause the heart to suddenly stop beating. Coach Mobley ran across the court and was one of the first people to reach him.
The incident is eerily similar to what happened to another USC player, Bronny James, son of NBA star LeBron James, who was hospitalized Monday after suffering a cardiac arrest during basketball practice, according to a statement from a family spokesperson.
‘I was super, super tired’
Iwuchukwu did not sleep well the night before and something was off, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Yet, he came to practice and pushed through, running and playing great. “He was playing terrific basketball,” head coach Andy Enfield told the Times.
It was that rebound soon after that gave Mobley pause, he said in a USC Athletics video.
“When he grabbed the rebound, it was not the authority that he normally had,” Mobley said. Instead of Iwuchukwu’s normal grab-and-pop rebound, Mobley recreated a slow, lethargic grab on the video.
“At the time, I was super, super tired,” Iwuchukwu said. “I don’t know why I am so tired.”
Mobley called over Enfield, saying, “Vince don’t look right.”
Iwuchukwu sat down, getting “super dizzy out of nowhere,” he said. The player said he was holding a cup of Gatorade in one hand and putting down his water bottle. The last thing he remembered was sitting back, about to drink his water and then “bam,” he said.
“Just looking at his eyes, they were rolling back in his head,” Mobley told the Times. “And I was like, ‘Oh shoot, this is something serious.’”
He started shaking and then convulsing, losing his motor functions, according to the Times.
Mobley ran over to the player and the training staff came to his aid. Athletic trainers, including Jon Yonamine, Erin Tillman and Lauren Crawford, performed CPR on Iwuchukwu and shocked him back to life with a defibrillator, USC said.
Trying to keep the player with them
“I felt like it was a dark void,” Iwuchukwu said. “There was like a little thing behind me that was glowing. It was low-key pushing me in and I was like, I can’t go in, I’ve got to go out.”
Outside of Iwuchukwu’s mind, Mobley was trying to reach the player.
“I was yelling at Vince like no other, like stay awake,” Mobley said. “It got to a point where I was almost praying inside but I didn’t want him to see or hear me get to a point where I’m feeling vulnerable and emotional about things.”
“Wake up, Vince, Vince, Vince, calling his name constantly,” he said.
Mobley’s voice reached Iwuchukwu, the player remembered.
“‘Get up Vince. Don’t die on me,’” he remembers Mobley saying. “In my head I was like, ‘Don’t die. What does he mean don’t die?’”
Iwuchukwu kept repeating “I gotta get up” in his mind, still in this void he described.
The defibrillator shocked Iwuchukwu’s heart back into motion. Iwuchukwu took a big, deep breath and his body jerked when he was shocked, and he let out a large wail, Mobley said.
Iwuchukwu said he wanted to get up right away, but the staff urged him to relax. He was alive.
“In my mind, I was like holy crap I think I know what happened,” Iwuchukwu said.
The road to recovery
The player was rushed to an ambulance and on the way to the hospital, Iwuchukwu called his mother, according to the Times.
“Mom, I think I just had a heart attack or cardiac arrest,” he told her from the ambulance.
After four days of tests and recovering in the hospital, there were no answers as to why this happened to the college freshman, according to the Times.
The next weeks and months felt like time was moving in slow motion, he said in the USC Athletics video. For three weeks he couldn’t do any physical activity and he longed for the court.
When he returned to court months later, the USC training staff watched and monitored Iwuchukwu’s moves. They were integral in helping him get back to the game, he said.
About seven months after his cardiac arrest, Iwuchukwu stood up and stepped out onto the court for his first game as a USC Trojan. The crowd roared and he received a standing ovation.
“I appreciate all the training staff, the coaching staff, for doing what they did,” Iwuchukwu said.
“They’re superheroes,” he said. “Superheroes save people’s lives and that’s what they did.”
CNN’s Eric Levenson and David Close contributed to this report.
