Fittingly, Sam Ashaolu was standing on the court at a pregame shootaround, wearing his Duquesne University basketball sweats, when he received the best news of his life.

The former player who has inspired a college campus with his determination to graduate despite being the most seriously wounded of the five Duquesne basketball players shot in September 2006 will receive his college diploma on Thursday.

Ashaolu nearly died of head wounds in the horrific shootings that followed a dance, rocking an urban campus that had just been chosen as one of the nation's safest.

He needed multiple operations to save his life, endured seizures and recurring hospital stays and, months after his recovery was underway, was told he couldn't play again because it was too risky to remove bullet fragments lodged in his brain.

"At any given moment, I was told, I could go to sleep and not wake up," Ashaolu said Wednesday.

Many athletes might have become angry, given up, quit school and begun their adult life with a grudge that would last a lifetime. Instead, Ashaolu told Duquesne athletic director Greg Amodio and coach Ron Everhart he wanted to stay with the team in any role and return to as normal a college life as possible.

Then, remarkably, he did exactly that.

"If somebody would have told you while he was in that hospital bed, battling for his life, that he would have a college degree in three years, most people would have said that's not possible, that's unbelievable, that can't happen," Everhart said. "It's a modern-day miracle."

Another player who was seriously wounded, Stuard Baldonado, left school without playing. Two others, Shawn James and Kojo Mensah, turned pro before their senior seasons in 2008-09 and didn't graduate. Ashaolu and Aaron Jackson, who received a minor wound, became close friends and helped turn around a Duquesne program that was 3-24 in 2005-06.

Jackson did it on the court as an all-Atlantic 10 guard who led the Dukes to a 21-13 record last season, the A-10 championship game and the NIT, where he scored 46 points during a double-overtime loss at Virginia Tech.

Ashaolu did it off the court, serving as a team manager, a teammate in pickup games and a role model for every college player who has experienced adversity.

"I overcame a lot," said Ashaolu, a 6-foot-7 power forward who played at Lake Region State College in North Dakota before transferring to Duquesne. "I hope it inspires some other kids who go through the same thing I went through to keep fighting."