NBA Draft Scouting Report: St. John's Forward Zuby Ejiofor

Evaluating St. John's forward Zuby Ejiofor.

Dec 20, 2025; Atlanta, Georgia, USA; St. John Red Storm forward Zuby Ejiofor (24) reacts after being fouled against the Kentucky Wildcats in the second half at State Farm Arena. Mandatory Credit: Brett Davis-Imagn Images | Brett Davis-Imagn Images

St. John’s forward Zuby Ejiofor is one of the biggest impactors in college basketball, using high-energy defense and consistent play-finishing to not only anchor the Red Storm, but build out a solid NBA Draft case in the process.

He’s an undersized center at 6-foot-9, though his reported 7-foot-1 wingspan, verticality and mobility make him a viable option at the college level, and could lead to some NBA translation down the line.

Ejiofor was a former four-star recruit who signed on with Kansas, before transferring to St. John’s prior to his sophomore season. He broke out as a junior, and is now seeing similar output with some marked improvement in his senior year.

He’s put himself on draft radars with defensive versatility, be it rim protection or switch-ability, as well as rebounding, screening, some passing upside and play-finishing on offense. You can read on for the full written scouting report on Ejiofor, or watch the comprehensive video with film below.

Strengths:

Defensive Versatility (Rim Protection + Switchability)

We’ll start the scout with Ejiofor’s selling point, which will be his defensive impact. It’s been apparent for years now at the college level and projects to translate to the NBA.

Despite being on the smaller end for a five at 6-9, Ejiofor is immensely strong, and immovable on the interior. He has solid athleticism overall, be it great verticality or fairly quick movement, and most importantly the wingspan to make up for lack of height.

Even more, Ejiofor has some of the best motor and physicality in this class, a real love for embracing contact, which helps in a variety of areas, but especially defensively.

He’s great about keeping position by anchoring down, and can be tough to get shots over with long arms that can fan out, prod and get hands on the ball. He’s averaged 1.7 blocks per game across 49 games in his junior and senior seasons so far, with a believable 5.9 block percentage. 

His strength and length make it tough for opposing bigs to go one-on-one against him, and he’s got great feel in drop and decent ball-tracking ability.

Secondary to his interior presence, but still highly impactful, is his switchability on the perimeter. St. John’s runs a switch-heavy scheme, and Ejiofor fits right into it with long arms, snappier movement than most bigs and great play recognition.

He can switch right onto guards, move his feet, flip his hips, and while he can’t always keep pace, he has great recovery tools. He can really cover some ground, and is very good at changing directions for his size.

When you put all of this together you have a pretty impactful defensive big, capable of holding his own in the paint, blocking shots switching, clogging lanes and just generally disrupting opposing actions. There could be some size concerns considering the NBA’s truly elite 7-footers, though Ejiofor’s held his ground with some fairly huge players at the college level.

Rebounding

Given Ejiofor’s size, he’s an above-average rebounder, which even accounting for NBA size and strength, should be a real plus on his end.

All the same rules apply here. Ejiofor doesn’t shy away from contact in the slightest. He scraps, grapples, is hard to move, can get off two feet quickly, and has the touch and composure to come down with boards more often than not.

He’s averaged over 10 rebounds per 40 in all four of his seasons, with really absurd offensive rebounding percentages in each. Across his junior season, the bulk of his points came on put-backs, an obviously great skill to have hanging around the rim. He not only has the pure strength to hang out, he can also shed players and naturally gravitate toward space while staying honed in on the ball.

St. John’s seems to be trending toward involving him on offense more as a senior, though he’s still scoring on put-backs often. NBA teams will likely benefit from letting him hang around the offensive glass. 

Play-Finishing

Ejiofor isn’t a prolific scorer at the college level for a soon-to-be 22-year-old, but will fill a variety of roles on offense at the NBA level. 

He’ll be at his best simply finishing plays: running the floor, cutting, rolling, posting up, and relying on put-backs when all else fails. He’s seen a slower start around the rim as a senior efficiency-wise, but has a long history of being pretty elite up close with vertical pop, length and touch.

He can finish powerfully or with some grace, even showing some floater and short-jumper work that could work on lengthier defenders in the NBA.

Ejiofor is pretty reliant on the creation and gravity of others, though he’s currently pretty unstoppable in the paint at the collegiate level, where he boasts a free throw rate of .85, as defenders resort to fouling him more often than not.

He’s been good, albeit not elite as the roll-man in the pick-and-roll, and improving there could be a real boon to his value in certain systems.

Passing Upside/Screening

Ejiofor’s a good passer for a big, offering some real upside at the NBA level. He is, very miraculously, leading St. John’s in assists so far in the 2025-26 season, seeing by far the biggest junior to senior jump in this area.

One of the more translatable skills here is his dribble-handoffs, which also leads to a quick note on his screening — he’s a good screener capable of making consistent contact and creating space for both shooters and drivers — and he’s especially effective at doing so in DHO’s.

Ejiofor’s also shown the ability to spray out with real consistency, be it from post-ups or after offensive-rebounds. He’s fairly accurate in these situations, scanning for open shooters and cutters and delivering to tight windows or shooting pockets.

The upside part of this equation lies in the face-up situations, where he’s shown some touch in big-to-big entry passes, finds open teammates on cuts and seldomly creates off the dribble. At 2.5 turnovers per game, there’s plenty of room for consistency and growth in those areas specifically.

How Ejiofor continues to fare as a passer will be one of the number one areas to keep an eye on as his senior season continues.

Areas of Improvement:

Shooting

There’s plenty of room for improvement with Ejiofor, far-and-away the most important being the addition of a consistent 3-point shot.

Ejiofor isn’t a complete non-shooter, hitting on 26% of his threes on just 1.5 attempts per game, 33% of all catch-and-shoot shots, and showing some growth as a general spot-up shooter in his senior season. But he’s not yet shown the ability to make him a real spacer, especially at the NBA-level.

If Ejiofor is playing the five-spot, undersized, without the threat of a jumper, he’ll have to be truly elite as a defender and inside scorer to win those minutes night in-and-out. Which is possible, but hard to do.

Again, the fact Ejiofor’s not currently sitting at a flat 0% on 0 attempts is a plus, and he’s shown the touch elsewhere to indicate there’s room for growth as a shooter. He can knock down deep two’s and the occasional three, and has long been an efficient free throw shooter on high volume.

Shooting could also help with positional versatility. He’s currently slated for center minutes, though the ability to really space the floor, paired with his quickness and switch-ability could lead to a potential future as a lengthy four.

Ejiofor’s 3-point misses so far in his senior season haven’t been horrendous, and the mechanics seem workable enough, though him truly shooting the ball is likely to be a multi-year project given where he stands right now.

Perimeter Comfortability

If Ejiofor isn’t destined to be a 3-point shooter, gaining more general comfortability on the perimeter will be a must for him to make NBA rotations. He lives in the paint, which in his present situation is fine, though he’ll need to continue refining ball skills to make an NBA impact.

Further honing his passing skillset, especially DHO’s to draw out opposing bigs, and putting the ball on the floor with more comfortability.

That can be seen in flashes with St. John, where he’ll self-create against slower-footed bigs for touchy lays, though it’s far from his comfort zone at one-to-two dribbles into powerful finishes.

Projection

Ejiofor may be an undersized big at 6-foot-9, though his combination of athleticism, 7-foot-1 wingspan and quicker feet, paired with the fact he’s tough, physical, brings the energy and simple winning-impact, should be good enough for teams to bet on at the 2026 NBA Draft.

Role-wise, Ejiofor likely projects to be a physically pro-ready backup five, capable of rim-running, guarding both in and out, bringing the energy, doing the grind-y stuff and generally raising the floor of a rotation.

His defense will be a plus, both on the interior and relative to most fives on the perimeter. He’s a rebounding machine, has some versatile passing upside and should be able to finish plays effectively when confined to specific roles.

I’d expect teams to value this archetype anywhere from the late-first round to the early-second, depending on team needs. The Oklahoma City Thunder, Washington Wizards and Golden State Warriors jump out as solid fits, given the current versatile bigs on the rosters that could mix and match with Ejiofor.

Range: Late-First to Early-Second

Role: Rim-Runner, Switchable Big

Impact: Rotation

Swing Skills: Shooting