Hard Work Paying Off For Florida State’s Michael Ojo By Wayne E. McGahee III Tallahassee Democrat January 24, 2017
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. ‐‐ Florida State center Michael Ojo looks like an intimidating person right until you get to his smile.
It's a smile that never leaves the 7‐foot‐1, 304‐pound center's face, but he does have good reason for it to be there. Ojo, a redshirt senior, has come a long way from his freshman year.
He's from Lagos, Nigeria, a town that had just one basketball goal, and he didn't start playing organized basketball until his late teens. He was more project than player at the time he stepped on campus.
“Basketball is a game of muscle memory and it takes a lot of repetitions to gain confidence so it grows instinctive for you,” FSU assistant head coach Stan Jones said.
“When you grow up in a village where they had one goal, and you couldn’t dunk on it. If you broke the goal then nobody could shoot on it. Michael didn’t get those repetitions like most kids in America do in the little leagues in second, third, and fourth grade doing all the drills and working on the mechanics.
“So it’s taken some time. All of a sudden you see him with the production he has now and realize that he’s just starting to catch up."
The biggest adjustment for Ojo didn't come on the basketball court, but in the classroom.
“Being able to socialize with people was the biggest challenge,” Ojo said.
“How to relate to people on campus and my teachers in classrooms. Because when I first got here my accent was really deep and they were talking too fast.
“My professors did a good job of adjusting in class just for me to get used to the language and everything like that.”
On the basketball court, Ojo had many challenges ahead of him.
Most notably was that he had to learn how to play the game as a big man. He had to learn how to dunk, and it's something that he's still working on five years later.
“I’m still practicing how to dunk,” Ojo said.
“I still miss some of my dunks. The rim we had back home was a little shaky. It wasn’t that good. If you break the rim you have to fix it, and I didn’t have the money to fix it.
“So I would have to go up and just drop the ball in. You’re not allowed to dunk the basketball. It took me a little while, maybe my whole freshman year, to get used to going up hard and shaking the rim hard.
“Now I don’t want to break the rim, but the rim is going to end up breaking. It took me a little while to get used to it because I started playing basketball late.”
He averaged less than a point (0.7) and one rebound per game as a freshman, and averaged just over two points and two rebounds per game as both a sophomore and as a junior. He missed most of his redshirt junior year with a torn meniscus in his left knee, but that also gave him the opportunity to learn about the game.
“One of the things we did last year, and it’s really opened the game up for him, was having him shadow coach Christ Koumadje as a freshman,” Jones said.
“It’s like the game slowed down to him, and gave him some reference points on how coaches view things."
This season, Ojo is averaging 5.3 points and 3.9 rebounds per game, and is coming off a 10 point, six rebound game against No. 14 Louisville. He's turned into a much better player, and has made an impact for the Seminoles in some big games this year.
One of the big reasons for his success this season is his improvement at the free throw line.
Ojo has made 38 of his 45 free throw attempts this season, and has the second highest free throw percentage on the team (0.771) behind freshman Jonathan Isaac (0.824).
His first three years he made just 41 of his 102 attempts (0.401).
“You have to get everything aligned,” Jones said.
“You have to get your grip. You have to know your alignment. You have to know your pace. You have to know your finish point and follow throw. You have to go through those things.
“That was the initial part when he was a freshman was getting those fundamental, structural things in place. Then it just becomes a thing of volume reps to get the muscle memory."
It wasn't just the structural issues that plagued Ojo early, but it was also the mental aspect of being in front of so many people.
“The next thing is you have to eventually be in that situation," Jones said.
"When you’re playing in front of 20,000 in Carolina or 12,000 in our arena and the game’s on the line with Dick Vitale on the sideline, everyone thinks it’s so easy to just make a shot. You have to get out there and manage your emotions.
“There was a time in Michael’s career where his mistakes were more from anxiety than what he was doing."
It's something that bothered him from the beginning, and it gave him something to prove.
“It’s been a learning curve in a couple areas for him," Jones said.
"He didn’t want to be labeled as the big guy who couldn’t shoot free throws. That’s something that he wanted to prove throughout his career. That he wasn’t a typical guy they could play hack‐a‐Shaq on.”
So coach Jones and Ojo went to work. He's spent a lot of time in the gym over the last five years working on the issue.
“Maybe a million shots,” Ojo said.
“I’ve shot a pretty good amount of free throws over the course of my career. From my freshman year to yesterday. I was in the gym yesterday shooting free throws. There’s always room for improvement unless you’re 100 percent.
“Even when I got injured last year I would come by the gym and shoot free throws because I couldn’t practice with them. I’ve shot a good number now. I take so much pride in it because it’s something that I struggled with early in my career.
"Now it’s satisfying that I’m shooting a much better percentage than before. It’s not where I need it to be, but that’s why I still practice and keep shooting. It’s much better than before.”
Ojo has been a big part of the Seminoles success this season. FSU is eighth in the country with an 18‐2 record and is 6‐1 in the ACC with a 6‐1 record against ranked teams.