Zak Keefer

zak.keefer@indystar.com

BLOOMINGTON – Crowds erupt, heads turn, jaws sink, momentum swings and OG Anunoby just stands there and nods.

In a lot of ways, the Indiana freshman forward is a basketball contradiction: His play is loud, his disposition quiet. Watch him rise ... and rise ... and keep rising while he finishes a cross-court alley-oop versus Ohio State. Watch him soar over Michigan State’s Kenny Goins like he’s a statue. Watch him thunder home a reverse slam against Illinois.

Then watch him forget to celebrate.

“He’s about business and not much else,” his dad says.

OG Anunoby is many things – throwback defender, gravity-ignoring leaper, furious at-the-rim finisher. He’s a highlight waiting to happen. He’s lightning in a bottle. What he is not: a talker, a boaster, a show-boater. The kid keeps it simple. The kid just plays.

And for that he is rare. Leapers and shot-blockers and dunkers dripping in talent like Anunoby aren’t supposed to be this quiet, this humble, this reserved on the court. They’re not supposed to celebrate the Dunk of the Year – Anunoby’s posterization of Goins in East Lansing last month – by turning his head and jogging back on defense. Where are the screams? The chest-pounding? The taunts?

“Not his style,” says IU grad transfer Max Bielfeldt. “He’ll make an incredible play, and he could push a defender or mouth off in their face. But he doesn’t. He lets his game do the talking.”

So that’s what he’s done. And the Hoosiers are the better for it. Who could have forecasted this sort of off-the-bench spark from Anunoby, the little-known recruit with all that untapped potential? In five short months, he went from massive question mark to a vital piece in Indiana’s Big Ten championship puzzle. The postseason starts Friday for the Hoosiers, who will chase their first conference tourney title. Then it’s time for the Big Dance.

The scary part? The kid who wears his shorts short, his hair high and his emotions tucked beneath his No. 3 jersey is just scratching the surface. And he knows it.

* * *

He tried baseball, and was a pretty good pitcher – but eventually quit. “Too boring,” OG told his dad. He tried football, and was a pretty good wide receiver – but eventually quit. “Too dangerous,” he told his dad. It was basketball that called to him. His arms were long, his legs were long, his leaps were high. He was dunking by age 13. It was the perfect match.

“Basketball was just more fun than the other sports,” he says now.

Problem was: OG Anunoby Sr. didn’t know much about basketball. He grew up in Nigeria, the son of a public servant, playing soccer “anywhere that was convenient and safe.” He pulled his family first to London – where OG was born – and then to Jefferson City, Mo., where he is a professor of business and finance at Lincoln University. There, his sons would flourish.

Anunoby Sr.’s oldest son, Chigbo, would make it all the way to the NFL, bouncing around for a handful of teams, including the Indianapolis Colts. His youngest, and namesake, was equally ambitious. He remembers one afternoon they spent inside a sporting goods store. OG was eight. He wanted his father to buy him a basketball goal – and not just any goal, but the nicest, most expensive goal the store had to offer.

Dad hesitated. This goal was awfully expensive.

“At the time, I thought basketball was just a hobby for him,” Anunoby Sr. remembers. “I didn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on a hobby. I was afraid after two days, he’d lose interest.”

So OG pleaded. Promised. Begged.

No, dad. I won’t. I’ll practice every day. Every single day.

Finally, dad relented. Ten years later this is what dad says:

“The return on that investment was very high.”

Because his son was right. His passion only deepened from there. OG poured himself into the sport, spending night after night in the backyard, shooting on that goal, ignoring calls for dinner, begging family members to come rebound for him. When school was delayed, he’d go out and shoot. When school was over, he’d go out and shoot. He spent so much time out there his dad began to worry he was going to hurt himself.

“I’m not kidding,” Anunoby Sr. says. “He played all the time.”

The basketball education was two-fold. A father learned the game just as his son learned the game. One day, OG came home from school and told his dad he wanted to play AAU basketball.

“What is AAU basketball?” his dad replied.

But just like that basketball goal, he knew what it meant to his son. He said OK. From there, basketball consumed their weeknights, their weekends, their lives. By his junior year, OG was playing for Team Thad, an Under Armour-sponsored team based in Memphis, a five-hour drive from Jefferson City. And his stock was rising on the recruiting trail before his biggest setback — a broken wrist —took him off the radar.

Suddenly, the coaches stopped calling.

So when IU coach Tom Crean saw Anunoby play at an AAU event in Atlanta, and instantly thought to himself, ‘Who is this kid?’, the tournament brochure didn’t have an answer. Anunoby’s name had been left off the list.

“They hadn’t put his name back on the roster after he got hurt,” his dad recalls.

Still, Crean saw something. He pounced.

“He didn’t mess around,” OG remembers. “He called me every day for the next week. He told me how much confidence he had in me, and made an offer. Some coaches said they had to see more. He said he didn’t.”

The visit to Bloomington, in the fall of Anunoby’s senior year, sealed the deal. Anunoby Sr. was struck by Crean’s willingness to lead the campus tour. “Most coaches have an assistant do that,” he says, “and it really impressed me that he didn’t.” There was also this: When Anunoby Sr. researched the IU coach, and his history of developing talented wing players, he stumbled on a few names he’d already heard of. He saw Dwyane Wade’s name. He saw Victor Oladipo’s name. He liked what he saw.

It felt right. It felt like home. So when OG made the final call, weighing 27 offers from the likes of Iowa, Mississippi, Georgia and Wichita State, Indiana was the choice.

And when his son told him, Anunoby Sr. smiled, knowing that basketball goal he’d bought for him all those years ago – to say nothing of his son’s hard work – had taken him further than he could have ever imagined. It had earned his son a college scholarship to one of the nation’s blue-blood programs.

OG would become a Hoosier.

* * *

No, it’s not O.G. It’s not Anuby. OG is short for Ogugua, but so many people had a hard time pronouncing it when he was younger they decided to shorten it. OG. No periods.

Told of ESPN analyst and WFNI-AM 1070 radio host Dan Dakich’s frequent praise of his son – “The next time I have a son, I’m going to name him OG,” Dakich has joked numerous times during IU telecasts – OG Anunoby Sr. laughs. “We’re flattered!” Told of what OG stands for in street slang – original gangster – and he laughs harder.

“I didn’t know that!”

His son is an original, to be sure. Teammates describe him as ... “weird.” Says junior Troy Williams, one of Anunoby’s closest friends off the floor: “It’s one of the first things I learned about OG when he got here. The man is weird.” The two became friends last summer, holding impromptu dunk contests after workouts (imagine that show). “I sort of just took him under my wing,” Williams adds.

Bielfeldt affectionately calls him “a clown.” He clarifies: “He’s always cracking funny jokes. He’s sarcastic. But that’s off the floor. He just doesn’t get caught up in the spotlight.”

Not yet at least. He’s still a freshman. Crean has talked of how, throughout this season, Anunoby had to learn how to sustain his intensity. His impact would come in spurts. At times he would play like a freshman. He’s still raw. The mistakes came.

But so did the growth. After not scoring more than six points in any game in nonconference play, Anunoby dropped eight or more eight times in the Big Ten. He remembers, three years ago, watching the likes of Oladipo and Yogi Ferrell and Cody Zeller lead the Hoosiers to a Big Ten championship. “I loved watching that team,” Anunoby says. Now he’s a key part of the Hoosiers’ latest title..

Most Indiana games are sprinkled with one or two or three O(M)G moments, an are-you-kidding-me finish at the rim, a ferocious block, the sort of plays that end up on "SportsCenter" by night’s end. Crowds erupt. Heads turn. Jaws sink. Momentum swings.

And OG Anunoby just stands there and nods.

What’s next?

Call IndyStar reporter Zak Keefer at (317) 444-6134. Follow him on Twitter: @zkeefer.

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