Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua (born 21 April 1999) is a Cameroonian

college basketball In United States colleges, top-tier basketball is governed by collegiate athletic bodies including National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the United States Collegiate Athleti ...

player for the Baylor Bears of the

Big 12 Conference The Big 12 Conference is a college athletic conference headquartered in Irving, Texas, USA. It consists of ten full-member universities. It is a member of Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for all sports. Its ...

. He previously played for the

UNLV Runnin' Rebels The UNLV Runnin' Rebels are the men's basketball team that represent the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in the Mountain West Conference of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA); it plays at the Thomas & Mack Center on campus. As ...

Early life and career

Tchatchoua grew up playing

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

before switching to

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

at age 16. In 2015, he took part in a local camp held by

Luc Mbah a Moute Luc Richard Mbah a Moute ( ; born 9 September 1986) is a Cameroonian former professional basketball player who last played for the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Mbah a Moute also plays for the Cameroon national t ...

and was later invited to a

Basketball Without Borders Basketball Without Borders is a basketball instructional camp organized by the NBA in conjunction with FIBA. It presents itself as a “basketball development and community outreach program that unites young basketball players to promote the sport ...

camp in

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Dem ...

. Two years later, Tchatchoua joined the NBA Global Academy in Australia, where he began learning English. He committed to playing college basketball in the United States for

UNLV The University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) is a public land-grant research university in Paradise, Nevada. The campus is about east of the Las Vegas Strip. It was formerly part of the University of Nevada from 1957 to 1969. It includes th ...

over offers from Gonzaga and St. John's.

College career

As a freshman at UNLV, Tchatchoua averaged 3.4 points and 3.5 rebounds per game. After the season, he transferred to Baylor and sat out for one year due to transfer rules. Tchatchoua was nicknamed "Everyday Jon" by his teammates due to his work ethic. As a sophomore, he earned

Big 12 The Big 12 Conference is a college athletic conference headquartered in Irving, Texas, USA. It consists of ten full-member universities. It is a member of Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for all sports. Its f ...

All-Newcomer Team honors. Tchatchoua averaged 6.4 points and five rebounds per game on a team that won a national title. He scored a career-high 21 points on 9 February 2022, in a 75–60 win against

Kansas State Kansas State University (KSU, Kansas State, or K-State) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Manhattan, Kansas, United States. It was opened as the state's land-grant college in 1863 and was the first public instit ...

. On 12 February 2022, Tchatchoua suffered a knee injury during a 80–63 win over

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

. An MRI revealed damage to multiple ligaments, and he underwent season-ending surgery. As a junior, he averaged 8.4 points and 6.8 rebounds per game and won

Co-Defensive Player of the Year, alongside

Oklahoma State Oklahoma (; Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a state in the South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the north, Missouri on the northeast, Arkansas on the east, New ...

's Moussa Cissé and

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the B ...

's Gabe Osabuohien.

Career statistics

College

, - , style="text-align:left;", 2018–19 , style="text-align:left;",

, 31 , , 11 , , 13.3 , , .475 , , .000 , , .682 , , 3.5 , , .2 , , .2 , , .7 , , 3.4 , - , style="text-align:left;", 2019–20 , style="text-align:left;", Baylor , style="text-align:center;" colspan="11",

Redshirt , - , style="text-align:left;",

2020–21 The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...

, style="text-align:left;", Baylor , 29 , , 0 , , 19.3 , , .576 , , – , , .773 , , 5.0 , , .4 , , .5 , , .7 , , 6.4 , - , style="text-align:left;", 2021–22 , style="text-align:left;", Baylor , 25 , , 0 , , 20.8 , , .677 , , .462 , , .771 , , 6.8 , , .7 , , .7 , , .4 , , 8.4 , - class="sortbottom" , style="text-align:center;" colspan="2", Career , 85 , , 11 , , 17.5 , , .591 , , .375 , , .740 , , 5.0 , , .4 , , .5 , , .6 , , 5.9

References

External links

Baylor Bears bioUNLV Runnin' Rebels bio
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tchatchoua, Jonathan Tchamwa 1999 births Living people Basketball players from Yaoundé Baylor Bears men's basketball players Cameroonian expatriate basketball people in the United States Cameroonian men's basketball players Power forwards (basketball) UNLV Runnin' Rebels basketball players