James Augustine pulls a knit cap over his head, practically covering his eyes. He slips on his earphones and cranks up the volume on his iPod.
Augustine doesn’t have a favorite song or even a favorite rock group. Rap. Country. Punk. Soul. He will listen to just about anything. The music booming in his eardrums lets him tune out everyone around him.
As a 6-foot-10-inch third-year starting forward for the No. 1 college basketball team in the nation, Augustine doesn’t expect to blend in and become invisible among thousands of students at Illinois.
But it doesn’t stop him from trying. He needs this time as he walks to class to put his thoughts in order. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone for fear they will ask about his next basketball game or, even worse, mention his inconsistent play.
How will that help his confidence, which at times is as shaky as the trembling beat reverberating on his headset?
“You always have Coach telling you something, your parents telling you something, your teammates telling you something, people out of the blue just telling you something,” Augustine said.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m focused on so many things, it’s a huge mess in my head.”
This is another side to stardom, one that is far more unnerving than pleasant for the 20-year-old from Mokena. He is in the midst of one of the most memorable times in 100 seasons of Illinois basketball, and he’s more recognizable than ever.
“I don’t know if he understands the hubbub,” his mother, Barb, said. “He thinks, `What’s the big deal? I go to school and play basketball.'”
Publicly, Augustine seems at ease with the team’s newfound fame. His witty, cheerful demeanor makes him extremely popular with teammates and fans.
Autograph seekers, pretending to be hotel employees, knocked on his hotel door in Skokie last weekend when Illinois came up to play Northwestern, and their efforts flattered and amused him.
On a radio show broadcast last week from Champaign’s antique Virginia Theatre with dozens of boosters in attendance, a child asked Augustine how long the team would keep its No. 1 ranking. The Illini have had an iron grip on it for an unprecedented seven straight weeks.
“Forever,” Augustine responded, sounding out each syllable and bringing the house down with applause.
Augustine enjoyed the moment as much as the fans, who are starved for the school’s first NCAA championship.
On the flip side of the thrill is heightened nervousness that has him jumpy. The more he hears about an opponent and the more he talks about a game, the worse his jitters become.
That was the case in the days leading up to Illinois’ early December victory over then-No. 1 Wake Forest. As he walked to classes the morning of the game, several fans stopped him with well-intentioned but unsettling reminders of the game’s importance.
“I just wanted to be focused and not have to talk about it or live up to people’s expectations,” Augustine said.
He wants to please fans as much as he wants to satisfy his coaches, teammates and parents, who are his toughest critics of all.
At times Illinois coach Bruce Weber hesitates to come down hard on Augustine for mistakes because his parents don’t hold back their own constructive criticism, Weber said.
“His parents are tough, which is good for him, but maybe that’s why he doesn’t have much confidence,” Weber said earlier this month.
In another interview, Weber offered another perspective.
“Maybe James uses it as a crutch to not show that confidence and self-esteem,” Weber said. “I’m searching for answers.”
Dale and Barb Augustine say they have scaled back their critiques in the last few years. They make no apologies for the standard they set for him as a child.
“The biggest thing we’ve done is tell him, `If you’re going to do it, do it right,'” Dale Augustine said.
Augustine’s father was a defensive back at Wisconsin-Oshkosh in the 1970s and is an assistant football coach at Lincoln-Way Central High School. His mother was a member of UW-Oshkosh’s swimming team.
The younger Augustine played quarterback at Lincoln-Way Central before he gave it up to devote himself to basketball in his senior season.
Dale Augustine drilled a second-to-none work ethic into his son and demanded as much or more from him as he did from the players he coached.
“He was always the one taking me to basketball games and giving me the huge lecture on the way back, telling me what I did wrong,” James Augustine said. “He was always the person to push me.
“Something he always emphasized was getting the edge on people. When other people aren’t working, you have to be out there working.”
Augustine’s tireless effort in the team’s workouts should boost his self-assurance, some say.
“Someday he’ll come out of his shell,” his father said.
For all his struggles, Augustine hasn’t performed poorly this season. He has respectable averages of 9.8 points and 7.7 rebounds per game on a team loaded with talent.
But his flashes of brilliance–like his 21-point, 10-rebound game against Ohio State on Jan. 5–leave audiences wanting more.
In that game, Augustine managed to put aside the worries and confusion that often rattle his mind. He cannot recall how he did it.
“That’s the mystery,” Augustine said. “If I knew what I did, I would do it every game.
“There are certain times you hit a point where you start freaking out about something or you try to do more than you need to do. You try to score more when you’re not supposed to be scoring. That totally takes you out of the game.
“Against Ohio State, I just went with the flow. I made a couple of layups, I started playing better and your confidence builds up.”
His teammates plead with him to be more assertive, to stop bottling up his ability and to channel the nervous energy into unflappable nerves of steel.
They want him to defer less to star guards Dee Brown, Luther Head and Deron Williams and look for his open shot.
“Coach always talks about knowing your role,” Augustine said. “I see myself as just playing defense, rebounding and scoring a couple points when we really need it.”
For Illinois to remain a national title contender, Augustine and Roger Powell, the team’s other forward, will have to give more. That was obvious in the team’s overtime victory against Iowa on Thursday night.
Brown and Williams struggled against the Hawkeyes, giving the post players a perfect opportunity to shine, but they went a combined 3-for-21.
“Sometimes everyone is yelling for James to shoot, even the fans,” Weber said. “Sometimes he acts like he never has played before.
“Instead of being confident and aggressive, he’s really tentative, like he never has caught the ball in that spot.”
The topic is a touchy subject between the coach and the player. Weber believes Augustine’s troubles sorting through the demands are unjustified.
“Sometimes he uses that as an excuse when people are getting on him,” Weber said. “Maybe they said it in different tones or different ways, but they’re all telling him the same thing, and that’s be aggressive, be assertive.
“When he doesn’t feel good about himself and he doesn’t have great self-esteem, he lets it affect him and uses it as a little bit of [an excuse].”
There’s no simple remedy for Augustine’s wavering confidence. Weber says he has made significant improvement from last season, when at times he played “emotionally drunk.”
“I think he has learned to be a little more under control,” Weber said.
Last summer Augustine worked out on the Illinois campus with Robert Archibald, who played for the Illini from 1999 to 2002 and now plays professionally in Europe.
“It’s hard to slow things down in my head,” Augustine said. “That’s something I have to learn, and it’s something I worked on with Archibald.”
He admits he hasn’t played up to his ability yet and he has more to show his team and family. His teammates want to see it sooner rather than later.
“He doesn’t look at himself the way others see him,” teammate and roommate Warren Carter said. “We see the star in him.”
