By CHRIS DORTCH
It’s a given that however far Tennessee advances into March will depend in large part on the play of senior guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie and freshman forward Nate Ament. But allow me to drop another Very Important Player on you.
Felix Okpara.
To have watched Okpara these last two years is to see a player who has allowed himself to be coached by the taskmaster Rick Barnes and become one of the better defenders in college basketball. At 6-11 and 235 pounds, equipped with a 7-3 wingspan and the athleticism of a track athlete, Okpara can guard all five positions. Coaches talk a lot about their own players capable of checking every position, but few can do it. Okpara can, and it just might be his ticket to the NBA.
If that sounds far-fetched, I can counter with my own experience studying the NBA Draft, first for NBA TV and then for NBA.com, the former for 15 years and the latter for a decade. My assignment for both was to study players who had the potential to be drafted. When you do it long enough, you begin to understand which players have what it takes and which ones don’t. Okpara has what it takes.
Allow me to list the reasons:
- We’ll go ahead and get the obvious out of the way because we’ve already mentioned it above. Dude is long and athletic, longer, and more athletic than most. That makes him a primo defender, and the feeling among NBA talent evaluators is it takes only one elite talent to get to the league.
- We discussed this before, but there’s no discounting the importance of submitting to being coached and then working to improve. Okpara has done everything Barnes has asked and more.
- Character is key. I don’t know the American family from Chattanooga that adopted Okpara and his brothers David and Kennedy, all of whom have played or are playing college basketball. But I know a lot about them through a mutual friend, and the boys are all kind, humble, intelligent, good humans. The family had the purest of intentions—to keep the brothers from Lagos, Nigeria away from unscrupulous middlemen who sought in the NIL era to basically sell the brothers to the highest bidders.
Once shielded from those rogue flesh peddlers, the boys blossomed. Older brother David played at and graduated from Cedarville University in Ohio. Youngest brother Kennedy is at Lipscomb where, as a 6-7 freshman, he’s played in 28 games and averaged 14.3 minutes, 5.3 points, and 2.9 rebounds.
NBA teams don’t want to take a chance on a player who’s a potential chemistry disrupter or off-the-court troublemaker. Felix Okpara is a great human and teammate.
Okpara, who played his first two seasons at Ohio State, has made marked improvement during his time at Tennessee. After missing the first two games of his career against Auburn in late January and Ole Miss in early February, snapping steaks of 64 consecutive starts and 82 consecutive games played, Okpara has returned to play some of his best basketball of the season. Against Oklahoma on Feb. 18, he contributed 18 points, seven boards, and two blocked shots. In Wednesday night’s loss at Missouri, he scored 15 points on 7-of-7 shooting and grabbed eight rebounds.
Okpara’s peaking at the right time — for himself and for the Vols. If he continues to score in double figures and show NBA scouts he can guard perimeter players as well as big men, the Vols have a shot at another Elite Eight run, and Okpara, like Jahmai Mashack just last season, will be the next defensive-minded Vol to be taken in the Draft.
Mark Pope thought he had diplomatically addressed what he thought was a bad call in Kentucky’s loss at Auburn last week, but the second-year coach received a reprimand and $25,000 fine from the Southeastern Conference anyway.
Pope didn’t like an offensive foul called on Collin Chandler that allowed Auburn to regain possession and beat the Wildcats on Elijay Freeman’s tip-in with 1.1 seconds to play. He alluded to his displeasure during his post-game press conference.
“We refuse to give control to people that are outside of our program. Refuse,” Pope said after the loss. “Regardless of how personal it might get or how bad it might get, we refuse to give control to fans, to give control to anybody else associated with this game. Regardless of how blatantly people are trying to make this not happen, we refuse to give them our power. … We don’t make excuses. We don’t do that. Regardless of what is happening. Regardless of how disgraceful things are, we don’t give away our power. Regardless of how embarrassing, personal, awful, unacceptable things are, we refuse to give away our power.”
Had Pope left it at that, he might not be 25K poorer today (I’m sure he can handle that chump change). It’s what he said after he left the podium that was picked up on a hot mic that probably did the damage.
Talking to Kentucky’s director of athletics Mitch Barnhart, Pope yelled, “Mitch, if those mother ——- try to fine me, screw ’em because I did not say a word about how they cheated us.”
Here’s a prediction for you. Arkansas freshman guard Darius Acuff, Jr., is going to win the SEC’s Freshman of the Year and Player of the Year awards. During SEC play, no one in the league has performed better, or been relied upon more, than Acuff, who went crazy in a double-overtime loss to Alabama last week, scoring 49 points. That total was the highest in the country this season, the most ever by an Arkansas freshman, and the most scored by any Razorback in an SEC game.
Had Acuff made one more of the 27 shots he launched, he would have tied Rotnei Clarke’s 2009 single-game school record of 51 points.
Acuff has won a record seven SEC Freshman of the Week awards, and of course, after that 49-point eruption, he earned the league’s Player of the Week honor on Monday. Along with Tennessee’s Ament, they are the only freshmen in league history to win seven or more weekly honors in a season. And there’s still a month to go.
Florida (22-6, 13-2) has just about wrapped up the SEC regular-season championship after a win at Texas on Wednesday night. The Gators have won eight in a row and seven straight SEC road games. Considering how tough any road victories are to come by, that’s an impressive feat.
One of the biggest reasons Florida has been unbeatable of late is the play Alex Condon, who after receiving several preseason All-America honors, got off to a slow start. In the Texas game, his 23 points marked his third straight 20-plus points game. It certainly seems like the big Australian is gearing up for March, where the Gators will try to pull off an NCAA championship repeat.
“I’ve found a rhythm these last few games,” Condon said after the Texas game. “My teammates are getting me the ball and trusting me to make the right plays. I didn’t feel like I forced anything tonight and just let the game come to me.”