Dissing the Stereotype
Josh Wallace chose Auburn because he wanted the best of both worlds: an NCAA Division I basketball career and a first-class engineering education. Wallace, an academic junior in civil engineering from Pensacola, Fla., is a 5’10″ point guard on Auburn’s men’s basketball team and the only walk-on starter in the SEC. He’s scored on the court – 176 points this season – and off, earning several Auburn University and College of Engineering scholarships, including the college’s Alabama Power/Southern Company scholarship, a dean’s annual scholarship and the university’s Academic Charter Scholarship and Alabama Alliance for Students with Disabilities/STEM scholarship.
Wallace won this year’s Outstanding Defensive Player and Playmaker of the Year awards after ranking second in the SEC with 1.7 steals per game, third in the league with a 1.8 assist/turnover ratio and fourth with 3.9 assists per game. He started 26 of 31 games for the Tigers and averaged 5.7 points a game. He scored a career-high 17 points in Auburn’s win at South Carolina.
Wallace also received the Foy Spirit Award, a $1,000 scholarship given each year in memory of Dean of Students James E. Foy and his wife, Emmalu Foy. It is one of the highest awards an Auburn student can receive. The Foy family established the award to recognize and reward a student who exhibits exceptional qualities of leadership and character, and a commitment to the Auburn community while maintaining a job to help fund education expenses.
“This is a tremendous honor for Josh,” said Tony Barbee, Auburn men’s head basketball coach.”He attacks academics with the same vigor as he does basketball. As coaches, you want guys who play bigger than what they are. You see a lot of 6’10″ guys play like a 6-foot guard. When Josh looks in the mirror, he sees a guy that’s 6’10″, 300 pounds. And that’s how he plays. He brings it every day. He does the same things academically. He is a wonderful person, and we are very proud of him.”
Wallace’s freshman teammate, T.J. Rice, an Alpharetta, Ga., native and wireless engineering student, got a heads up from Wallace on what he could expect in his engineering classes. “We take some of the most difficult courses,” he says. “We keep a lot on our plate with handling practice, lifting and engineering school work, but it’s a rewarding experience.”
Rice is a walk-on who earned a Boeing Aircraft scholarship and Alabama Power/Southern Company scholarship. Studying engineering and being a student athlete are both full-time jobs on campus, but he doesn’t shy away from the challenge.
“It does feel like I have two jobs, and it’s a lot of work,” says Rice. “But I am making sacrifices both ways. There are certain things I want to do with my engineering classes that I can’t always do because of basketball, but I can still find time to participate in things that I really want or need to do.”
One of those things is spending time getting help with his classes, such as calculus, through the Alabama Power/Southern Company Academic Excellence Program. “We meet once or twice a week, and I get help from upper level students,” says Rice. “It’s very beneficial, so I make time to meet with them. And calculus is interesting because I haven’t learned about integrals before now.”
“I have to keep academics first, especially because I am walk-on,” says Rice. “I look ahead to my future in engineering, because it will take me further in my career.”
Wallace agrees with Rice on the importance of academics. And, apparently, his teammates recognize that because they often go to him with questions about classes, especially when they involve science and math.
“They joke with me and give me a hard time sometimes for being an engineer,” he says. “They’ll call us nerds, but I say, ‘Hey, nerds rule the world.’”
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