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Think Reaching the Final 4 Is Tough? Then You Haven't Met Kansas' Udoka Azubuike

LAWRENCE, Kansas — The bedroom door was slightly ajar, creating just enough space for the 10-year-old boy to peek inside.

Udoka Azubuike couldn't help himself that night eight years ago in Nigeria. He'd never heard sobs like this before—especially not from his father, Fabian, who sat on a mattress and scratched furiously at the golf-ball-sized sores on his swollen legs, the ones that had rendered him bedridden and unable to walk.

"My father was a proud man, a police officer," Azubuike says. "But when I looked through the door I saw tears. My whole life, I had never seen my dad cry.