Pittsburg ? Wearying of his long hospital stay and eager to resume being a college student, Sam Ashaolu was spending another boring evening watching TV when news of Miami football player Bryan Pata’s shooting death flashed across the screen.

A look of disbelief on his face, the Duquesne basketball player realized immediately what might have happened to him Sept. 17, the day his life nearly ended.

“I lived and that poor kid didn’t, so I can’t get down,” said Ashaolu, a junior forward who was one of five Duquesne players shot following an on-campus party. “I’m just happy to be alive.”

And, he added, getting well.

The worst act of street violence involving a major college sports team injured nearly half of Duquesne’s scholarship players, but the 23-year-old Ashaolu is making a steady recovery from two gunshot wounds to the head. One bullet was surgically removed, but the other splintered in two sections of his brain and may never be taken out because such surgery would be extremely risky.

For now, Ashaolu is happy to be an outpatient, no longer saddled to a Mercy Hospital bed, and he shoots and dribbles a basketball and lifts weights daily. He attends Duquesne practices and games, so involved emotionally that it’s almost as if he were playing himself. At the Dukes’ first game, he was seen walking nervously and cheering in a private box.

“The toughest part is sitting, not being out there with my teammates and helping them out in games,” Ashaolu told The Associated Press in his first interview since the shootings. “I’m looking forward to next year, getting back into things. Missing out on playing basketball, that’s the worst thing that’s happened the whole time.”

Sam Ashaolu listens during a news conference on Nov. 13 in Pittsburgh. Only two months since he suffered two gunshot wounds to the head, Ashaolu is making a more rapid recovery than anyone expected.

Now that he’s back on campus, though not yet as a student, he is asked repeatedly by students about the shootings. He is polite, but clearly dislikes discussing the subject.

“I’m a quiet type of dude so I’m not used to all these questions from them,” Ashaolu said. “I just want to be Sam – chill out with my boys, be back in school and do what I’m ready to do instead of being a guy who got shot and is still living.”

Also shot were forwards Stuard Baldonado (left arm, back) and Shawn James (foot) and guards Kojo Mensah (arm, shoulder) and Aaron Jackson (wrist). Only Jackson played as Duquesne split its first four games with the most inexperienced lineup in NCAA Division I. James and Mensah are ineligible this season after transferring from other schools.

Ashaolu does not know any of the four charged in the shootings – two men, two women – and was walking away from a shouting match that occurred just before the gunfire began. The mayhem apparently occurred when the female friend of a male who isn’t enrolled in the university began talking to a Duquesne player at the party, one of the first social events Ashaolu attended after enrolling at Duquesne two weeks before.

Ashaolu’s big brother, John, and best friend Jason “Quick” Campbell have told him what happened. Sam Ashaolu has watched TV newscasts, but he does not recall being shot – only the shouting that occurred before it. He is glad to be pain-free after initially being on strong painkillers.

“He considers this a minor setback,” Campbell said. “He knows he’s getting back.”