Victor Oladipo – Sophomore
DeMatha High School – Upper Marlboro, Maryland
6’5" – 214 lbs.
Victor Oladipo comes to Indiana as likely the most highly recruited individual on this squad before Cody Zeller walked in the door. His strength and athleticism for a high schooler really stood out to a lot of scouts and many schools were confident that he would be an easy project player to make high caliber. Oladipo saw interest from dozens of schools and collected an offer list of 13 schools before choosing the Hoosiers. Some of those schools include Pitt, Notre Dame, Xavier, Maryland and Marquette. Definitely some schools that feel good when you can out recruit them for a player.
As a senior at famed DeMatha High School in Washington D.C., Vic averaged 12 points, 10 rebounds and 4 blocks a game. That stat line is really telling of what Oladipo is capable of athletically. As a high schooler he was a man among boys in the athleticism department which helped him garner four blocks and ten rebounds a game as a guard. Oladipo was able to help lead DeMatha to a City Championship in one of the most competitive high school scenes outside of Indianapolis. Needless to say Oladipo was oozing with potential coming out of high school and was a big get for the Hoosiers.
As the more heralded of the two man recruiting class, Oladipo was instantly a fan favorite. The best word to describe Oladipo when he first set foot in Assembly Hall in front of a crowd is "swag". The guy certainly has a confidence about himself and the Hoosier faithful ate it up. He wowed everyone with his sheer athleticism in the dunk contest and pandered to the audience all night. He is definitely the personality that has been missing from Crean’s first couple years. Oladipo brought a certain flair to this team that it has slowly begun to adopt as a group.
In his freshmen season, Oladipo played all 32 games and started five. He started out of the gate in non-conference play blazing hot. Coming off the bench he brought an energy and high tempo that the Hoosiers desperately needed. Culminating in a 16 points and seven rebound game off the bench versus Colorado. This helped him earn his first career start against Penn State which saw him respond with 14 points and four rebounds in 27 minutes. Needless to say Oladipo was a big contributor to last year’s team. The big issue for Oladipo is that he really got ahead of himself a lot. Lots of head down dribbling resulted in a turnover to assist ratio of 11/7 which is unacceptable from a guard. As a whole though it was a very inspiring season as a frosh he averaged 18 minutes, 7.4 points a game and nearly 4 rebounds; which is big time if he can improve on that this year.
As a sophomore Oladipo has been garnering all kinds of attention as most improved from media and teammates alike. It really sounds like Vic and Sheehey have the potential to be major players by the end of this season. What is expected of Victor this season is for some improved perimeter defense. He’s the one player with the lateral athleticism to be able to shut down an opposing point guard. He has to be the guy to do it. If he can improve on his defense his play time should jump to around 25 minutes a game. If that happens and he can keep the turnovers down we’re looking at a near double digit scoring average and an extra rebound or so bringing his per game average up to five. These expectations may be a bit high overall as like Sheehey I think he needs one more year to become an "it" guy, but they aren’t completely implausible either. Similar to Sheehey if Vic is getting a majority of the starts through the season then this year has NCAA tourney written all over it.