SoCalHoops College News

Freshman Profile: Vincent Okotie Of SDSU--(Nov. 15, 1998)

Is this overkill, or what?  It's our personal tribute to San Diego State.  As we said in the preamble to the article about David Abramowitz,  we ran across just a ton of articles and information put out by the San Deigo Union-Tribune, and we wanted to share them since we don't believe the U-T has an archive option and it's just a matter of time before they disappear.  So we've decided to preserve it here.  This one is on Vincent Okotie, another freshman at SDSU. Here it is: 

In her homeland she is known as Oteri. In America, she answers to "Lucky." Not that "Smart" would have been inappropriate.

With her son, Vince, in tow, a 3-year-old whose father had died when Vince was an infant, Oteri Okotie left Nigeria 15 years ago to pursue a college education in the United States.

Once settled, initially in Ames, Iowa, and later in San Diego, Lucky Okotie figured out quickly that the term athlete, as defined in the United States, was strikingly similar to the word money. Accordingly, Vince Okotie, who used to play soccer, eventually learned to dunk.

"Every person that walked up to my mom when I was growing up would say, 'Does he play basketball?' " said Vince, now 18 and a freshman at San Diego State. "She would say, 'No, what's this basketball you're talking about?' "Why do I play basketball? Because my mom told me, 'That's where the money is in America. You're not going to make any money playing soccer.' "

Before Vince Okotie's freshman year at Grossmont High in 1993, his experience with organized basketball would hardly have been defined as considerable. He was an occasional participant in pick-up games at the Boys and Girls Club and did his best to file away fundamentals in middle school, but for Okotie a zone trap might just as well have been a sand trap. "Everybody kept telling me how
raw I was," Okotie said. "I was a lot stronger than a lot of guys, so I just used that to try to get by."

Before the season was through, he was more than getting by; he was getting recognized. His freshman year was the first of four straight seasons in which Okotie was selected to the All-Grossmont North League first team. By the end of his prep career, he would twice be selected the league's Player of the Year. He was an All-CIF selection as both a junior and senior, and was named to the Union-Tribune's all-county first team last year, averaging 22.8 points per game during a season in which he never failed to score in double figures.

San Diego State coach Fred Trenkle, who had had an eye on Okotie for two years, had seen enough. Now it was merely a matter of beating Arizona, USC and West Virginia to the punch. Not only did Trenkle land a haymaker, he also landed a player ranked by at least one scouting service as the 63rd-best high school senior in the country. "Of all our (freshmen) players, I think Vince has shown more
maturity than anyone in adjusting to the college game," Trenkle said. "He doesn't have to think as much, because he understands things quickly and he's able to use his athletic ability. We may have a couple of players who are better athletes than Vince, but he's plenty good enough that before he's through, he has the talent to be an all-conference player."

At 6-foot-7 and 230 pounds, Okotie, one of eight freshmen on this year's roster, has the ability to attack from virtually anywhere on the floor. An explosive player around the basket, he is also an accomplished three-point shooter, giving Trenkle a weapon largely unavailable to him in his previous four seasons. "It allows us to put a 6-foot-7 guy on the perimeter, especially against a zone," Trenkle said. "It just adds another dimension that you have to guard against. (Former Aztecs guard) Kevin Betts last year could do a good job outside against a forward, but when those guys posted him up he just didn't have the strength. Vince is as physical a player as we've got. I think he's going to be able to take advantage of some situations inside and still be able to go outside and be effective."

If not, Okotie can count on hearing from his mother, who in addition to teaching nutrition and home economics at various sites throughout the county, is not overly tolerant of mediocre basketball.  "My mom influences everything I do," he said. "When I was being recruited, we would go to church together and she'd pray that God would take her out of the decision and just do what was best for me. But I could tell she wanted me to come here. And even though she doesn't know anything about basketball, she thinks she does, so she's my No. 1 coach. She'll be the first to tell me that I didn't play well."

In Nigeria, Vince Okotie's middle name of Edirien means patience. Don't ask him to practice it on the floor. "A lot of people are talking about how our freshman class has a chance to be something special in a couple of years, but we're planning on having something special this year," he said. "In two years, we're just going to be that much better. We're not going to make excuses by saying we're young." 

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