Once an afterthought,
Indiana's Oladipo
now
among nation's best
ALL-MET ELITE
DEMATHA HS.
HYATTSVILLE MD.
This was Oladipo's dream while growing up in Upper Marlboro, Md. Not necessarily his father's, but just about everyone else in the house -- from his mother to his three sisters -- wanted to see him earn a college basketball scholarship. The other kids used to poke fun at Oladipo back when he was in middle school and even in high school because he couldn't shoot and could hardly dribble, but Oladipo kept working on his skills in hopes of one day playing college basketball.
"He was air-balling and bricking everything," said Notre Dame guard Jerian Grant, who first met his best friend in the eighth grade. "Nobody paid any attention to him as a player back then." Recalling his high school days, Oladipo said, "They never, ever ran a play for me. Maybe a lob and that was about it. I wasn't very good. I wasn't really a basketball player."
Oladipo admittedly wasn't much of a player as a teen-ager, but that didn't stop him from sprinting into the street to shoot jumpers as soon as his father would leave the driveway. Team Takeover's Keith Stevens recalled the first time he saw a 14-year-old Oladipo, a skinny, frail long-armed kid who couldn't shoot, dribble or even dunk.
"He played hard, though," Stevens recalled.
Oladipo began playing summer ball with Stevens and his outfit, but his first AAU campaign didn't go as anticipated -- as he broke his foot in his first tournament in Virginia. Oladipo figured it would just a sprain, though, and continued to play through May and June before finally getting it checked out at the hospital and being told it was cracked. When Oladipo returned, it was as a different player. "I was so much more athletic," he said. "I rehabbed hard and went from being an average athlete to a really good athlete."
Adds Stevens: "I don't know how it happened. But some of the dunks after he came back were unreal."
What's not to be happy about these days. Oladipo is a self-made star, turning himself from a hard-playing, mid-major recruit who played out of position throughout his entire high school career to a lock-down defender who is shooting better than 50 percent from 3-point land and is squarely in the National Player of the Year conversation. Oladipo is averaging 13.8 points, 5.8 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 2.3 steals while shooting 64 percent for the top-ranked Hoosiers.
"He's dealt with success and notoriety really well," Crean said. "He's got a gift to get back to base really quite -- and it's due to his incredible sense of character." Oladipo hasn't forgotten his roots, either. He flew back home to Maryland for Christmas the morning after the win against Florida Atlantic, leaving campus around 4 a.m. to catch an early morning flight out of Indianapolis. When he arrived, he didn't go straight home to see his family, instead going from the airport to meet Stevens and a bunch of 13- and 14-year-olds from the Team Takeover program hand out turkeys to those less fortunate.
"That's just who he is," Crean said. "He's special."
