When Melvin Ejim chose to enroll at Iowa State, basketball heavily influenced his decision.

That mindset has slightly changed for Ejim since his freshman year. While the junior forward continues to be one of the team’s mainstays in the rotation on the court, the accolades stemming from the classroom have become just as numerous.

“As a freshman I came in and I really didn’t care for school much,” Ejim said. “As you grow as a person and as a player, you see how dependent you are on academics.”

When the Big 12 announced its 2013 awards on March 10, 2013, Ejim’s name could be found on the All-Big 12 Third Team list after averaging 10.6 points and 9.3 rebounds per game during the regular season.

As it has come to be with Ejim, basketball wasn’t the only reason he made the list. Ejim also took the inaugural award for the Big 12 Scholar-Athlete of the Year.

“You look at all the different awards that might be the most important,” said ISU coach Fred Hoiberg. “He’s everything that a student-athlete should be. He does great work on the court, obviously. But his work off the court has been every bit as impressive.”

Ejim has a 3.74 GPA while majoring in history in his time at Iowa State and has been named to the Academic All-Big 12 First Team in each of the past two seasons.

“I think over the past several years we’ve been doing really well on the court and off the court,” Ejim said. “The court has been taking up most of the attention, but we’re having great strides in our academic GPAs.”

Even then, the academics have had to go hand-in-hand with basketball. That is one thing ISU freshman forward Georges Niang has learned during his first season.

For Niang, academics are harder than basketball.

“Don’t tell Fred that, though,” Niang said with a laugh.

Time in the classroom sometimes comes following a lot of time spent in the sky traveling. After the team plays a weeknight road game, many players return to the classroom the next morning.

“Academics is always tough because you’ll have a game on Wednesday and then you’ll have a 9 a.m. class on Thursday,” Niang said. “So you’ll get in at 2 in the morning, you’ll get six hours of sleep and then you have to get right back to class.”

Their coach knows all about that grind. During his time as a player at Iowa State, Hoiberg was a three time, first-team academic all-Big Eight selection and was a first-team academic All-American his senior year.

With Hoiberg at the helm, the Cyclones for the first time in school history reached a 3.0 cumulative GPA as a team in the spring of 2011.

“You have to have the right priorities,” Hoiberg said of doing well in the classroom.

Those priorities are what help get Niang to his morning class on Thursdays, even after arriving home late from a game.

“Of course I [make it],” Niang said. “[It’s] theater.”