ShareThisMarquette shooting guard Darius Johnson-Odom used to dream of hitting a clutch shot in the NCAA Tournament, counting down in his Raleigh, N.C., backyard -- 3 ... 2 ... 1 -- as an imaginary crowd watched.
The fact that it took so long for the former Wakefield High state champion to get the opportunity -- spending a year in prep school, then another in junior college before he joined the Golden Eagles last season -- made his sealing 3-pointer against Syracuse on Sunday all the more special.
"There was a time when I wondered if I'd ever get here, even if I'd get to play Division I," the 6-foot-2, 215-pound junior said Monday night. "... And now, to be playing North Carolina? That's a life story -- and not just for me, but for my team."
Johnson-Odom, whose 11th-seeded team will play the No. 2 seed Tar Heels in Newark, N.J., on Friday in the round of 16, is one of five Marquette players who took a more circuitous route than most to the NCAA regional semifinals. Among the starters, Johnson-Odom, the team's leading scorer, attended Hutchinson (Kan.) Community College; guard Dwight Buycks went to Indian Hills Junior College, based in Ottumwa, Iowa; and wing Jimmy Butler went to Tyler (Texas) Junior College before they ended up on the roster of coach Buzz Williams -- who began his coaching career at Navarro College, a two-year school in Corsicana, Texas.
"In the back of our minds, I think we do feel like we have something to prove," Johnson-Odom said. "Me, Joe (Fulce), Jae (Crowder), Jimmy, Dwight -- that's five junior-college players on our roster. And you look at a team like North Carolina, and it has six, seven, eight (McDonald's) All-Americans -- it does make you wonder why they don't recruit junior-college players. It does make you want to fight as hard as you can, work as hard as you can."
Then again, working hard is nothing new for the player nicknamed "DJO."
His mom, Carolyn, remembers him picking up a basketball at age 3, and from the time he started making left-handed jumpers, it seemed like he never really put it down. Early on, he was coached by his father, Lonnie. At Wakefield High, his coach, Rob Partin, and athletic director, Dexter Cooley, immediately noticed his desire to improve.
"I was the most impressed with him, with what he did in the offseason," Cooley said. " While others were at home playing video games, he was up here on the court, working. ... I remember I got here one morning, about 7 a.m., and he was here already, waiting for me to let him in. I asked him, 'You need a basketball?' And he said no, he was going to work on some defensive stuff. How many guys do that?"
After scoring 16 points to become MVP in the 2006 4-A high-school championship game his junior season, Johnson-Odom figured he was headed for Division I. Multiple mid-major schools liked the way he could score (he poured in 49 points against Wake Forest-Roseville as a senior), and Clemson and Virginia Tech had made contact, "although he used to always joke that he was a Big East guy," Partin said.
Then came a problem: The NCAA Clearinghouse wouldn't accept an online class Johnson-Odom had taken to raise his high-school GPA, forcing him to attend The Patterson School in Lenoir, N.C., for a year. He then had to spend a year at Hutchinson before he finally won his appeal.
"It was really frustrating," he said. "I thought I had it made -- I had won a state championship, figured I would be at least a mid-major player ... I thought it would be handed to me, and I remember I did not want to go to junior college.
"But when I look back now, I know it was a challenge -- for me to learn that nothing is given to you, that you have to work for it, work as hard as you possibly can. And that's what's gotten me to where I am now."
After being named a first-team junior-college All-American, Johnson-Odom said he was drawn to Marquette and coach Williams because of a shared focus and intensity. He averaged 13 points as a sophomore, and has upped it to 16 ppg this season -- helping his team to an improbable postseason run, considering it was teetering on the Selection Sunday bubble after going 7-8 down the stretch.
"He's played with a chip on his shoulder," said UNC coach Roy Williams, who remembers noticing him in a summer league game, but never recruited him. "And now that chip is a big ol' block of confidence that makes him even better and better."
And scary for the Tar Heels, especially if Friday's game is close.
When Marquette's go-ahead 3-pointer left Johnson-Odom's hand and swished through the net with 27 seconds left Sunday, "all I could think was 'patented Darius,' Cooley said. "... There's a great lesson in what he's accomplished. He had to struggle a little bit to get where he is, but he never gave up on his dream."
Three ... 2 ... 1...
(robbi.pickerel(at)newsobserver.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit The News and Observer of Raleigh, N.C.
