Road to Duke
The basketball DNA in Patrick Ngongba II’s family reads like a novel that spans three continents, a Category 4 hurricane, a Korean basketball league, and the WNBA — all before he ever picked up a ball himself.
His father, Patrick Ngongba Sr., was born in 1978 in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. He moved to the United States in December 1993, a fifteen-year-old from a landlocked African nation arriving in the mid-Atlantic with a basketball player’s frame and ambition. He attended Calvert Hall College High School in Maryland, then played four seasons of college basketball at George Washington University from 1997 to 2001, a 6-foot-8 power forward and center. After graduating, the elder Ngongba played professionally overseas — first in South Korea’s KBL with the Wonju DB Promy during the 2001–02 season, and later for ASS Rabat in Morocco’s top division.
His mother’s story is equally extraordinary. Tajama Abraham was born on September 27, 1975, on the island of St. Croix in the United States Virgin Islands. She lived there until the age of fourteen, when Category 4 Hurricane Hugo struck on September 17 and 18, 1989. To survive, Tajama took shelter in a commercial refrigerator measuring eight feet by twelve feet, crammed inside alongside her four siblings, her mother, her father, and her grandmother — eight people in a walk-in cooler while the winds outside raged at 140 miles per hour. The family survived. That experience forged something in Tajama that would define the rest of her life.
She went on to play basketball at George Washington University from 1993 to 1997, where she retired as the program’s all-time leading scorer with 2,134 career points — a record that still stands — and was inducted into the GWU Basketball Hall of Fame. She was selected 31st overall in the 1997 WNBA Draft, playing for the Sacramento Monarchs in 1997 and the Detroit Shock in 1998. After her playing career, Tajama built a coaching career that spanned five different schools over two decades: assistant roles at Richmond, VCU, George Washington, and George Mason, plus a five-year stint as head coach at Radford from 2008 to 2013 where she won Big South Conference Coach of the Year honors. She later served as an assistant at Georgetown before returning to George Washington as a coach.
Patrick and Tajama met while playing basketball at GWU. They married in 2003. Basketball was not just the family business — it was the family language.
The extended family tree deepens the legacy further. Tajama’s brother, Faisal Abraham, played at Marquette University, where he ranked among the program’s all-time leading shot blockers at 6-foot-7. Patrick II’s older sister, Naja Ngongba, played college basketball at Radford, Mars Hill University, and Elizabeth City State University, and has represented the U.S. Virgin Islands internationally. His cousin Isaiah Abraham currently plays for Georgetown.
Patrick Ngongba II was born on October 30, 2005, in Manassas, Virginia, and grew up in the Northern Virginia basketball corridor. He began his prep career at Highland High School before transferring to St. Paul VI Catholic High School in Fairfax — a program with a direct pipeline to Duke that had already produced Jeremy Roach and Trevor Keels. At Paul VI, Ngongba developed into one of the premier centers in the country, a physically imposing post player with soft touch around the rim, underrated passing instincts, and the kind of basketball IQ that comes from growing up in a household where both parents had played at the collegiate and professional levels.
On the Nike EYBL circuit with Team Takeover, Ngongba averaged 12.0 points and 7.4 rebounds per game, shooting nearly 72% inside the arc. A breakout 33-point, 18-rebound, 5-assist performance against Phenom University in late May 2023 opened eyes across the country. He was rated a five-star recruit by ESPN, ranked the #19 overall player nationally and the #3 center in the 2024 class, and was named the best player in the state of Virginia.
Then came the setback that would test the family’s resilience. Ngongba suffered a significant foot injury that required surgery and forced him to miss his entire senior season at Paul VI. For a player whose stock was ascending rapidly, the timing was devastating. But Ngongba’s mother knew something about surviving storms. The family’s approach was patient, disciplined recovery.
After healing, Ngongba tried out for and made the USA Basketball U18 National Team, helping Team USA capture gold at the 2024 FIBA Men’s U18 AmeriCup, where he averaged 4.5 points, 4.8 rebounds, and 1.2 blocks per game while shooting 66.7% from the field.
On November 4, 2023, Ngongba committed to Duke over Kansas State, Kentucky, Michigan, UConn, and North Texas. Kansas State had recruited him the longest due to his strong ties to coach Jerome Tang, and North Texas had given him his first scholarship offer. But Duke — and the chance to play alongside Cooper Flagg, Kon Knueppel, and Khaman Maluach in what became the consensus #1 recruiting class in America — was the call. Darren Harris, his Paul VI teammate who had already committed to Duke, helped recruit him. Ngongba spoke with Flagg on his visit about forming a dominant frontcourt together.
“As parents, we were looking for coaches who would push Pat outside of his comfort zone,” Tajama told ESPN. “Pat is a composed player who has a steadiness about him and tries to do the little things well.”
At Duke
Ngongba arrived at Duke in the fall of 2024 still working his way back to full strength after the foot surgery that had cost him his senior season. A minor injury in preseason delayed his debut by two weeks. He made his first appearance on November 16, 2024, against Wofford, posting 2 points, 6 rebounds, and 2 assists.
As a freshman, Ngongba played behind Khaman Maluach, the starting center and eventual #10 NBA Draft pick. In 30 games, he averaged 3.9 points, 2.7 rebounds, and 0.5 blocks in just 10.6 minutes per game. The numbers were modest, but the growth was visible to anyone paying attention. Jon Scheyer called him “a quiet competitor” and praised his composure: “There’s not really a moment that’s too big for him. He’s really, really smart and he understands the game well, but he’s physical and competitive. You trust him with the ball. He’s just been such a solid guy for us.”
Maliq Brown, the veteran transfer from Syracuse, put it more simply in November: “Pat is different.”
The moments came when they needed to come. In the Sweet Sixteen of the 2025 NCAA Tournament — a 100-93 win over Arizona — Ngongba delivered 8 points, 2 rebounds, and an assist in 12 minutes off the bench. Duke reached the Final Four, finished 35-4, and sent three players into the top ten of the NBA Draft: Flagg (#1), Knueppel (#4), and Maluach (#10). Five Blue Devils total went to the league. Ngongba watched, learned, and waited for his turn.
His sophomore season has been the payoff. With Maluach in the NBA, Ngongba stepped into the starting center role and has been one of the most improved players in the ACC. Through 29 games (28 starts), he is averaging 10.7 points, 6.0 rebounds, 1.9 assists, and 1.1 blocks per game while shooting 60.2% from the field. He leads Duke with 32 blocks on the season — doubling his career total from freshman year in a single campaign.
The passing has been the revelation. From the high post, Ngongba reads cutters and finds three-point shooters with a precision that belies his size. Draft analysts have called his playmaking his standout skill — a 6-foot-11 center who functions as a connector in Duke’s offense, making reads that recall Wendell Carter Jr.’s time in Durham. He scored a career-high 17 points against Niagara while also draining his first career three-pointer. Against Florida in a 67-66 nail-biter, he posted 11 points, 5 rebounds, 5 assists, and 5 blocks — the kind of line that fills up every column.
Alongside freshman Cameron Boozer, who leads the team in points, rebounds, and assists, Ngongba has formed one of the most formidable frontcourts in the nation. Duke entered March 2026 at 29-2, ranked #1 in the country, and the overwhelming favorite for the #1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament. Ngongba has been integral to that — the steady, physical, high-IQ center who anchors the defense and makes everyone around him better.
There has been one complication. The foot that cost him his senior year of high school has flared again. Ngongba missed the regular-season finale against North Carolina with foot soreness and has been ruled out of the ACC Tournament. Scheyer has prioritized getting him healthy for the NCAA Tournament: “To be honest, health going into the NCAA Tournament is the priority. It just is.” Duke won convincingly without him — Boozer had 26/15/5 and Brown dominated defensively in a 76-61 rout of UNC — but the Blue Devils’ title hopes rest in significant part on Ngongba’s return to the lineup.
Where Is He Now
Patrick Ngongba II is a sophomore starting center for the #1-ranked Duke Blue Devils. He is twenty years old, recovering from foot soreness, and expected to return for the opening round of the 2026 NCAA Tournament.
He is projected as a late first-round pick in the 2026 NBA Draft. Bleacher Report’s Jonathan Wasserman has mocked him to the Denver Nuggets at #25, noting that certain NBA teams will be drawn to his passing and ability to facilitate from inside the defense. Draft evaluators compare him to Wendell Carter Jr. — another former Blue Devil — citing similar physical profiles, playmaking instincts, and defensive steadiness. His scouting report highlights his bruising strength, rim efficiency, and passing IQ, while flagging his foot injury history and the need to develop a more consistent perimeter shot and pick-and-roll game for the NBA.
His mother coaches basketball at George Washington, the same university where both his parents played, where his mother set the all-time scoring record, and where his parents met. His sister played college ball at three schools. His uncle blocked shots at Marquette. His cousin plays at Georgetown. The family that survived a hurricane in a refrigerator, that crossed an ocean from the Central African Republic, that bridged continents through basketball — they all watch Patrick wear #21 for Duke.
There is a version of this story that is simply about basketball lineage, about genetics and training and advantage. But the full version is richer. It is about a father who left Bangui at fifteen and found his way to an American university through sport. It is about a mother who huddled with her family in a commercial cooler while a hurricane tore apart her island, then became one of the greatest players in the history of her college program, then played in the WNBA, then coached for twenty years across five schools. It is about their son, who inherited not just their height and their touch but their steadiness — the quality his mother identified when she told ESPN that Pat “tries to do the little things well.”
He missed his senior year. He backed up an NBA lottery pick as a freshman. He stepped into the starting lineup as a sophomore and became one of the most efficient and intelligent centers in the ACC. He is dealing with a foot injury heading into March Madness. He is twenty years old, and his family has survived worse.
“Pat is a quiet competitor,” Scheyer has said. “There’s not really a moment that’s too big for him.”
The son of a man from Bangui and a woman from St. Croix, raised in Virginia, playing for Duke. The Brotherhood runs deep — and in the Ngongba family, it runs through bloodlines.