It’s mid-April and alone in the gym where he’s trained for four years, James Augustine is doing what he does best – but wants to do better.

With his iPod strapped to his arm and his practice shoes strapped to his feet, Augustine is working on his outside shot. A huge black machine is parked under the basket; it catches each ball, sucks it down and spits it back to him, humming and beeping with each repetition. Man and machine have a rhythm, but that’s no surprise; they have gone over this same task every day for weeks.

One mile north, most Illinois seniors are sitting through their last few college classes. One hundred and forty miles farther north, fellow former Illini Dee Brown works out in Chicago; he’s finished his degree and returned home to train. But Augustine is somewhere in the middle, with one class left and two months to go before the NBA draft that could make or break his future in basketball. So the senior spends most of his days alone in the Irwin Basketball Complex, counting down until classes end and the rest of his life begins.

“Right now, all I can do is work as hard as possible,” Augustine says. “I’ve got to get as close as possible to where I want to be.”

After a record-setting college career, Augustine is ready to take the next step. He is days away from getting his diploma, but Illinois’ all-time leading rebounder hopes it is what he did on the court, not in the classroom, that will determine where he stands following four years of college.

As a kid, he never really thought about playing pro basketball. Augustine’s dad, Dale, coached high school basketball and football, but James’ favorite game was always baseball. While he admits a deep childhood admiration for Michael Jordan, Augustine says it wasn’t until he began to sprout above his classmates that he turned his focus toward hoops. And it wasn’t until he became a starter for the Illini that he realized he could make the sport into a career.

“I never really thought about it probably until my sophomore year here,” Augustine says. “I think about it now just because that’s what I’m trying to do. It was a dream always, but I never really considered it realistic or anything until a couple years ago.”

But just because things are possible doesn’t make them easy, and Augustine says he knows it’s a long road from college success to joining the upper-echelon of professional sport. That’s why he allowed himself just a few days to rest after his senior season ended and headed right back to the gym after spring break.

“I’ve been training, developing my game my whole life, so it’s not too hard,” Augustine says. “I’m just trying to get my shot down and work on the whole game.”

At 6-foot-10 he is a little undersized for an NBA center – Bulls’ center Tyson Chandler, for example, is 7-foot-1 – so Augustine is working on skills that will help him become a stronger perimeter player. He focuses on his outside shot, his one-dribble shot and being able to gun it on the perimeter.

Illinois head coach Bruce Weber says it is Augustine’s unostentatious work ethic that will turn into his greatest asset at the next level. Augustine has shown enormous improvement in the three years Weber has worked with him, the coach says, and he should be able to adapt his strengths as a college player as he develops an NBA-caliber game.

“James has made huge strides, and he’s done it quietly,” Weber says. “He’s a great team player.”

Augustine knows hard work will continue to be important should his name get called on draft day. He says former teammate and current Utah Jazz guard Deron Williams has warned him about the intensity of playing an 80-plus game schedule – that’s more than twice as many games as the Illini played this season – and the toll it can take on your body.

But Augustine says that is just the price you pay for achieving every kid’s dream.

“Its basketball. It could be worse, you could be sitting in an office somewhere,” Augustine says. “It’s probably hard on your body; it’s a lot of travel, but if that’s what you have to do, I’d rather do that than sit in an office all day.”

Should Augustine make it to the pros, Williams warns things will get more intense as basketball becomes the central element of his life. Williams said before the Jazz’s season began, that eliminating the stress of classwork makes things somewhat easier, but that the pressure only mounts when you know your career is riding on how well games go.

“It’s not easier than college, but it’s easier because you have more time,” Williams says.

Augustine hopes he’ll be able to join his former teammate in the pros next fall. He knows he is athletic, agile and versatile enough to make it – now, he says, it is time to prove that to the world.

“I think people want winners, and we’ve done that throughout the last four years,” Augustine says. “But I think they look at athleticism and how good you are.

“You’ve just got to keep working out. You’ve just got to outwork everybody and be ready to play.”