Olaseni’s growth an inspiration for all Hawkeyes

IOWA CITY - Four continents provide the cultural foundation for Iowa senior Gabe Olaseni.

His parents met at a university in the United Kingdom, each a continent away from their homeland. Benson Olaseni came from Lagos, Nigeria and became an East London architect and city planner. Yvette Ivanna (now Olaseni) moved to London from Georgetown, Guyana and joined the teaching ranks.

Abodunrin Gabriel Olaseni was born Dec. 29, 1991, as his parents' third child. His first name is Nigerian - as with his three siblings - and means 'born during the holidays” because it's a happy time. The 'n” is silent. The name is so difficult to pronounce that here, in the heart of the Midwest, he's known as Gabe.

'Everyone else calls me that (Abodunrin) except when I'm here,” Olaseni said. 'I'm still very in touch with my heritage. My parents made sure that I knew where I came from. I'm definitely happy I grew up in London. I feel as though all those experiences have shaped me into the person I am today. I'm grateful I do have such a rich heritage.”

Olaseni, a 6-foot-10 senior, is a deep thinker, a scholar and, at times, a comedian. He used Internet search engines to learn about basketball history and its impact on the Civil Rights Movement. He became interested in the NBA by watching highlights, such as Kobe Bryant's 81-point game.

'I just tried to immerse myself in it as much as I could to try to learn as much as possible,” Olaseni said. 'Obviously I'm still learning now.”

Olaseni, 23, has dedicated his life to basketball, but the sport hardly defines him.

FIRST STEPS

Education and hard work were vital tenets in Olaseni's household. Early on, they lived in a rougher area of East London before the family relocated to a better section of town. Olaseni described his family as athletic and either he or his siblings competed in cricket, rugby, soccer or track.

Olaseni recalls the moment when he first saw a basketball. He was playing soccer and he saw players shooting hook shots and dunking the basketball. He was between 11 and 14 years old.

'It seemed like so much more fun than what I was doing, which was just standing in one place being a goalie, deflecting footballs,” Olaseni said. 'I think from that moment on, when I saw the guys having so much more fun ... I just wanted to play basketball.”

He immediately latched on to the sport. His school was 10 minutes from his home and he found a place and a time for basketball, 'rain, sleet or snow.”

'It sounds cliche, but we used to always dribble,” he said. 'We got 20 minutes for lunch, and we'd get in a couple of games of one-on-one.”

Olaseni joined the East Side Eagles of the EBL (English Basketball League) and played on under-16 and under-18 squads. He preferred defense, where he could block shots. He sported an Afro like NBA star Ben Wallace and wore layers of wristbands. When Olaseni was 16, he toured junior colleges and universities in the United States. Among the places he visited included Des Moines Area Community College and the University of South Dakota.

'I was like, ‘Wow, this place is so much nicer than in England,'” Olaseni said of South Dakota.

Olaseni changed his hair style from an Afro to dreadlocks and joined his East Side Eagles in an Orlando, Fla., AAU tournament. There he received several Division II offers and caught the attention of Iowa assistant coach Andrew Francis.

'I just saw this long, agile kid running up and down the floor,” Francis said. 'I was trying to get names and there was no info in the book. Then you try to go to the scorer's table, and they really didn't have anything and you can't talk to the coaches there, so I was essentially stuck. It was intriguing because I liked his size, his agility and athletic ability.”

Olaseni doesn't believe him.

'He said he saw me and tried to get my details, but I didn't have any details to give to anyone,” Olaseni said. 'I don't really believe him on that. But if that's true, that's kind of cool.”

With Olaseni's size, athletic ability and raw talent, interest grew for his services. Olaseni's parents made him plan for his future with education a priority. He talked to prep schools from around the United States and opted for Sunrise Christian Academy near Wichita, Kan. Olaseni wanted to focus on both education and basketball, which the school provided.

AT SUNRISE

Olaseni was among several international players enrolled at Sunrise, and they dubbed their living quarters IHOP for 'International House of Pain.” He quickly learned he needed to become more assertive on the basketball court.

'The biggest thing we worked on here was his mind-set of being aggressive, and if you know Gabe, you know how nice he is,” Sunrise Christian Academy Coach Kyle Linstead said. 'He used to be that nice on the court.”

Olaseni also had to refine his basketball skills. He averaged 10 points and eight rebounds a game, but he sat for long stretches. That largely was about his lack of toughness on the court.

'As talented as he was, he spent time on the bench,” said Linstead, who remains close to Olaseni. 'Who wants a soft five? Nobody. That's what he was when he came. He didn't have any offensive skills really to speak of. He could dunk anything close, and he could shoot it a little bit.”

Olaseni's raw, athletic talent intrigued college coaches. Oklahoma, Ole Miss and Iowa went after Olaseni. Iowa's coaching staff was interested in Sunrise teammate Eric Katenda, who later committed to Notre Dame. They immediately were impressed with Olaseni.

'The first time I go out there, I look and I see Gabe,” Francis said. 'I was just intrigued by this guy who was running up and down the floor like a deer blocking shots.”

'We watched him work out and said, ‘This guy, he's got something special,'” Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery said. 'So we were one of the first ones that were all in on him.”

Olaseni picked up a scholarship offer and wanted to commit to Iowa during his visit. But he waited until after he visited Oklahoma.

'I was very naive to the system, the whole recruiting thing,” he said. 'I was straight off the plane and I was instantly on the Rivals website. I was like, ‘Wow, this is crazy.”

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Olaseni enrolled at Iowa during the summer along with Aaron White from Strongsville, Ohio. They were joined by Cedar Rapids product Josh Oglesby.

Olaseni roomed with a foreign exchange student at the Mayflower dormitory. White moved in across the hallway and took the first step toward meeting Olaseni.

'I couldn't understand a word he said,” White said. 'His accent was so thick at the time, and he used like crazy slang so I didn't understand him at the time.”

Gradually, they became close and roomed together. Olaseni's accent became diluted, and the two engaged in 'weird, goofy stuff,” White said. Olaseni still was a basketball project, playing in 18 games and totaling just 26 points as a freshman. But he gleaned the nuances of basketball from older teammates Bryce Cartwright, Eric May and Devon Archie.

Olaseni learned about the rigors of time management after a trip to Penn State his freshman year. He had a five-page paper due the next day and rushed to the dorm after flying back from a night game. He stayed up and wrote his paper. Olaseni then labored through a three-hour practice the next day.

That incident forced him to become more organized. Now he plots out his entire semester's worth of projects so he'll never lumber through a week like that.

'Education obviously comes first, but we still have to perform in certain other aspects,” Olaseni said. 'We have to be a professional. It's hard when you're 18. People want to have fun, people want to do stuff, but you have to look at the big picture. You can't be going out and getting hammered on Thursday if you've got a game on Saturday. Not that I would necessarily do that if I wasn't a student-athlete, but it's just like time management and sacrifice because I want my teammates doing the same thing. Matt Gatens wasn't downtown; he was studying. Eric May did the same thing.”

Olaseni believes his legacy should include similar outreach to his younger teammates.

'Guys like Brady (Ellingson), the really good kids that are coming up, I feel as though I owe them to lead by example,” Olaseni said. 'They have so many shots coming from different directions.”

GROWTH AS A PLAYER

As Olaseni approaches his final game at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, his trajectory is incomparable. He has yet to start a game, but he ranks third in scoring (8.5 points a game), fourth in rebounding (4.9) and second in blocks. He plays nearly 19 minutes a game.

During Iowa's current five-game winning streak, Olaseni has averaged 10.8 points. In a second-half spree at Indiana, Olaseni scored eight of Iowa's first 16 points. He blocked a shot at one end of the floor and followed with a one-handed tip dunk at the other. He shouted and flexed while charging back on defense.

'That's not really what I do, but it was the situation,” Olaseni said. 'Obviously it was a big-time game on ESPN. You want to make plays for your teammates, and I think I made a pretty big play so I just reacted. I probably shouldn't have done that.”

'I was going crazy in the Indiana game, when he was screaming and spitting and getting hyped,” Linstead said. 'If you would have told me that was going to be Gabe when he first got here, I would have told you never in your life.”

Throughout his career, Olaseni has struggled with confidence, particularly after a missed shot or blown assignment. His teammates and coaches label him a perfectionist. But Francis raved about Olaseni's work ethic, calling it 'almost overzealous” in his pursuit of improvement.

'You had to be a visionary to see what he has become but you never know someone's work ethic, someone's drive and determination to improve,” Francis said. 'You don't know that until you're around him on a daily basis, and that's what we learned about him after a time.”

Olaseni sits at 593 career points with a 5.0 per-game average. He grabbed 11 offensive rebounds at Purdue, the most for an Iowa player since 1997. Twice he scored 18 points off the bench and he sank 18 consecutive free throws earlier this season. He's shooting a career-high 77.3 percent from the free-throw line this year.

'He's come a long way since his freshman year,” White said. 'It's been well-documented he hasn't been playing basketball as normal people who accept Division I offers. The strides he's made, you guys see it, his confidence on the court, it's way higher than when he got here. He's impacting the game at a high level. Obviously being as close as I am, I'm super happy for him and proud of him.”

FAMILY, FRIENDS AND FUTURE

Until this weekend, Olaseni's family never has traveled to Iowa to see a game. Two years ago, the Hawkeyes took Olaseni to England to see them. In 2013, the school scheduled a series of exhibitions in London and France, where the players met Olaseni's family and saw his surroundings.

'It's just kind of unique and pretty much awesome at the same time just to know Gabe,” Oglesby said. 'He's from London, the first guy I've pretty much been friends with from overseas. I think the coolest thing about it was to go to London and just to see the lifestyle that he lived. Our friendship has built a lot over the four years.”

The distance between Olaseni and his family is difficult, but they communicate through new technology. Olaseni returned to London for a few weeks last summer. He joked how his father, Benson, was getting older and still was on his case as many fathers are with sons. But Olaseni had no idea it would be last time he'd see his father in person.

Tragedy often sneaks upon a person when he least expects it and such was the case for Olaseni on Nov. 26, 2014. Halfway around the world, his father passed away. Amid the sadness was the reality of his situation. He was a senior in Iowa, and his family was in London. He was in the middle of his final basketball season. His mother encouraged him to stay put, which he did until mid-December.

His teammates rallied around Olaseni as they would their own family. The night of his father's death, in a game against Northern Illinois, Olaseni played 20 minutes, scored 10 points, grabbed five rebounds and blocked four shots. As he left the court, he embraced his teammates near the bench.

'One of the last things he said to my mom is he doesn't want for me to have a bad last year,” Olaseni said. 'He wants me to make the most of it. I'm definitely trying to do that and after that, I feel as though once this year is over, I can sit back ... obviously I've let my emotions out several times, but I feel as though I can be like, ‘Yeah, I made you proud, degrees, I finished my year.'

'My dad always taught me to have your head held up high. Whatever you do, I remember when we used to go shopping, he used to make me walk in front of him and no else knew that I was his son, and he always said to have your head up.”

Olaseni will graduate in May with degrees in English and Journalism. He will compete in the Portsmouth Invitational in April, a showcase for 64 college seniors in front of pro basketball scouts and executives.

His aspirations remain high with an NBA career as the goal. But he also understands it might take time - and a few stops - to reach his potential.

'I have a few options,” he said. 'But I think I'll be coveted in Europe because obviously they can only have a certain number of American players, and I feel as though I'm an American player.”

And if the NBA doesn't call?

'Just the story of my life. I'm going to work until I achieve it.”

NOTES, QUOTES AND ANECDOTES

1. Olaseni nearly became a Cyclone.

As a youth in East London, England, Olaseni was contacted by the head coach of Great Britain's under-20 squad who told him Iowa State coaches wanted to watch him play.

'I still have email messages from coaches at Iowa State wanting to come watch me play, so you wouldn't be interviewing me if I managed to make that trip,” he said with a laugh.

2. Olaseni realized he needed work after watching NBA commentators talk about Tyrus Thomas during draft coverage in 2006.

'When he was getting drafted the whole professional process was like ‘He can really run and jump.' I was like, ‘So can I,'” Olaseni said. 'Then the guy, I think it was Charles Barkley, said, ‘So can a deer. Just because you can run and jump doesn't mean you have any skill.' It really woke me up.

'Instantly I was like I have to work on my ball-handling skills. Just because you can run and jump, there's going to be a thousand players just like you. You have to do something more than just run and jump to be as successful as you want to be. That just definitely made me realize that it's not just track. You can't just run and jump. You have to understanding plays, spacing, screening angles ...”

3. Olaseni multiple times praised his former teammates for helping him become the player he is today.

'We've had great leaders,” he said. 'Matt Gatens, he was tough in the beginning, but he warmed up to me because I was about my business (laughs). ... (Andrew) Brommer and (Devon) Archie, even though they didn't wow fans with what they did, but they helped me out on and off the court.”

4. Sunrise Christian Academy Coach Kyle Linstead said he watches most of Olaseni's games and he 'holds a special place in my heart.”

'He's come so far,” Linstead said. 'We talk all the time about there's two things you can control and that's attitude and effort. When you step back and look at Gabe and the maturation process on the court, he's done those things well. He's really had a great attitude no matter what has come his way. He's really, really worked hard. You can't control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude and effort.

'Gabe's career is a testimony of that.”

5. Iowa assistant coach Andrew Francis said work ethic is what separated Olaseni from the staff's modest initial assessment to the senior's current production level.

'When you saw Gabe, you just saw a lot of raw ability,” Francis said. 'You can sit back and say with some time and experience he can be impactful by his junior year, and that's how I looked at him personally. The athleticism, the length, the activity that he played with, all lent to this kid has a chance with that size. At the very least impact the game on the defensive end and the glass. His offense, which was never really bad from a skills standpoint, it was just the understanding of when to do what. So his basketball feel wasn't there because he hadn't played basketball very long.”

6. Olaseni's coaches and teammates are thrilled his family will attend Saturday's game in person.

'We didn't get a chance to meet them until we went overseas over the summer when we took him back to London, and his family is absolutely delightful and they watch every game,” Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery said. 'Even though they haven't been here physically, they know everything that's going on, and that's the beauty of it. To to have them here physically and kind of see everything that they've been watching on television is going to be, it's going to be a great day for all of us, I think.”

'It's going to be emotional,” Iowa senior Aaron White said. 'I'm really happy they're going to get here. I know a couple of times he talked ... he knew for sure they're coming senior night. He's come a long way since his freshman year. It's been well-documented he hasn't been playing basketball as normal people who accept Division I offers. The strides he's made, you guys see it, his confidence on the court is way higher than when he got here. He's impacting the game at a high level. Obviously being as close as I am, I'm super happy for him and proud of him. Obviously, I love playing with him.”

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