Viking senior forward Paul Guede is a long way from home.  He's even further away from the experiences that dominated his young life growing up in Hackney, a very rough area in east London.
      
Playing basketball for Portland State puts him an ocean and a continent away from his family, Pierre and Suy Guede, brother Ange, and sisters Lisa and Marina. It puts him more than 3,000 miles away from where he played his high school and junior college basketball (Grace Christian High School in North Carolina and Tallahassee Junior College in Florida. Originally, Guede was recruited to Valparaiso University in Indiana, but only redshirted there due to NCAA Clearing House issues which weren't fixed until half way through his freshman season).
    
But he is light years away from his experience growing up in London after his family emigrated from his native Ivory Coast, a former French colony in East Africa, when he was three years old. Guede is extremely proud of his African heritage and speaks with a slight French accent - his parents language around the house—even though he's always spoken English.
    
His was a middle class family in the midst of a working and lower class neighborhood “where my friends weren't the best. I had no future. I was drifting” when he got to Homerton House, a technical college (really a secondary school by US standards) where “we weren't learning anything, we'd just socialize.”
    
In fact, when he arrived at Homerton, he couldn't read. He couldn't write a paper.
    
Enter Joe White, a basketball coach and PE teacher at Homerton. The appearance of White was one of two major events that changed Guede's life.
    
Guede knew White as a basketball legend in a country which didn't exactly emphasize the sport. He had coached and played professional basketball in England, and, according to an Internet posting, made Hackney a “hotbed of basketball development and talent.”
    
“He was my mentor as a person and in basketball. He saw greatness in other people and to someone from east London, that was important. At that time, I didn't take life seriously,” recalled the 6-5, 205-pounder.
    
White inspired Guede “by checking my grades, making sure I was studying seriously, going to class and doing life the right way.” He had a reward system. “If you got good grades, occasionally you got a new pair of basketball shoes. So, I'd practice five days a week and pretty soon I was good enough to play on the Division 1 men's team, even though I was only 14.” And, he occasionally got a new pair of shoes.
     
The other event which changed Guede's trajectory happened when he was just nine-years-old. He'd played some soccer up to that time, but had a best friend who also played basketball. One day, Guede was watching a scrimmage.
    
“There were only nine players and the coach asked me if I wanted to play. I made a couple of layups and decided I really liked the game. Even though they were older, they let me practice with them.  I just happened to be standing there,” he said. And, that changed his life.
    
Besides a suspicion that he might be good at it, he saw what basketball could help people achieve—“just traveling to other cities. As a kid from inner London, just traveling, games in other cities, being able to go to the U.S. and get a degree.”
    
As happens to a lot of young basketball players, Guede had NBA stars in his eyes early on and White thought enough of his talent that he was trying to get him settled in an American high school to further develop his hoop skills. Guede was just 15.
    
Then, White was diagnosed with cancer. His death that year was devastating. “That was really hard. I didn't know where to turn, or what to do,” he said.
   
But when White got sick, he made contingency plans.  He contacted Ben Scheffler, a Seattle basketball coach and friend whose wife had attended Cambridge, about Guede and solicited his help.
    
Scheffler called a number of U.S. schools and found an opening at Grace Christian.  A high school sophomore in the U.S. system, Guede was also asked to play soccer, a sport in which his father had excelled, and he had played as a youngster in England.  He was good enough to earn all-state honors three times (“I was tall, strong and fast.”)
    
But his first love remained basketball. He led the Crusaders to the state championship in 2005 and 2006 (the same year he competed in the U20 European Championships averaging a team-high 15.0 points a game).  As a high school senior, he averaged 22 points, 11.1 rebounds and 5.6 assists per game.
     
His connection to Portland State also began while he was at Grace Christian. Guede traveled to Seattle to visit his friend Scheffler. There, he met former PSU head coach Ken Bone, a University of Washington assistant at that time. After some time, Bone began recruiting Guede out of high school. But with the likes of Texas A&M, North Carolina State, Wisconsin and Valparaiso in the mix, it was a tough decision.
    
When things didn't go well his first year at Valparaiso, he felt he was losing his edge. He couldn't practice or travel with the team. Hence, the transfer to Tallahassee.
    
At that point, Bone was at PSU and had kept up on Guede's career. He took another run at Guede after he finished his AA degree.
    
“He came to see me play and was there a couple of days.  He sold me on how much he really wanted me, that the team needed me and how the team was getting better. When I did my visit here, I really related to the players,” he said.
     
So he signed on with the Vikings and had a great summer working out with the men's national team in England, where he met the Chicago Bulls' Luol Deng, also a British national.
    
“Just being around the pros was impressive and enlightening. It helped quite a bit,” Guede recalled.
     
Then, Guede fractured his foot in his second PSU game during the 2008-09 season and was in a boot for eight weeks, missing the remainder of the season.
     
Even last year, Guede played much of the year with pain.  “I had this pain in my foot even though the x-ray didn't show anything.  It was tough.”
     
Still, the two frustrating years have made him tougher. “I'm more patient.  I know that this will get better.  You learn to go to treatment when scheduled and you learn to have a positive attitude,” he said.
   
Now in his senior year, Guede figures “I'm peaking at the right time.  I'd still like to play after college, maybe in Europe.”
     
PSU Head Coach Tyler Geving agreed that Guede is improving.
    
“He's coming into his own on the defensive end and the offensive end, too. He's not going to score 20 points each night, but he should come close to double figures,” said Geving, who added that “he's taking better shots than he did last year. He's getting stronger with his ball handling.”
     
Interestingly, Guede's first thoughts regarding what he likes about basketball have little to do with on-court play.
  
“I like making friends and memories.  I like traveling and being around different cultures, going places.  Not a lot of people get the opportunities I've had,” he said.
   
But, he does like defense…”being able to stop someone, helping out a teammate who has gotten beaten, making a pass so a teammate can score...being a play-maker.”
   
PSU Head Coach Tyler Geving has taken note of Guede's defensive prowess.
   
“He's excellent on defense, always great.  He's smart, knows where to be and he coaches his teammates,” Geving said.
     
Guede has been one of the Viking bright spots early in the season Geving said. His three-point field goal with five seconds left in the season-opener led the Vikings to an 83-81 win over Pepperdine. He has averaged 5.7 points, 4.2 rebounds and taken on  the opponents toughest player each night.
     
After basketball (Geude is majoring in Social Science with an emphasis in International Studies and a minor in Business), he'd like to do something basketball-related, maybe work with younger kids.  If that doesn't work out, perhaps social work (“I'd like to help families.).”
    
But, he's not forgotten his roots and he wants to talk to kids from his type of background.
   
“At that age, being bad is cool. But, that life is useless. Not being able to read is embarrassing.  Education is the key to a different life. Your friends aren't going to be there to help you get a job.  Education is the first priority. Use your (athletic) ability second,” he wants to tell them, pointing out that his two best friends from his younger London days are in jail, along with a lot of the other kids he knew.
      
So far, Guede is living his dream. “But there have been a lot of sacrifices. Not seeing my family for a year, it's tough. I haven't been able to see my younger sister grow up, haven't been able to help take care of my family,” he said getting quite emotional. “I've stayed here over the summer to work on my basketball and my mother really misses me. The sacrifices are hard.”
     
But through it all, he's kept his eye on the prize.
    
“Basketball gave life to me. I had to make this work.”  

See Paul Guede hit the game-winner against Pepperdine