(Photo, Sammamish Review)Sammamish Review
April 6, 2010
A few things stick out when Aaron Osgood looks back at March Madness 2010.
There was the escort to and from games, which involved three police motorcycles and a SWAT car (“It kind of reminded us of the movie, ‘Speed,’” he recalled.)
There was, of course, the frequent news coverage, including a front page story in the New York Times.
There were the professors at Cornell University, the ones who started congratulating Osgood for a job well done.
But his favorite moment was coming onto the court at the Carrier Dome at Syracuse University, where thousands of Cornell supporters, dressed in red, cheered his team before the game against University of Kentucky.
“It was so loud when we walked out,” he said.
The 21-year-old Sammamish native was part of this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Cinderella story. Cornell became the first Ivy League team in more than 30 years to reach the Sweet 16. To do it, it had to pull off two unlikely upsets, beating No. 5 seed Temple University and No. 4 seed University of Wisconsin. (Cornell was the No. 12 seed.)
Even the team’s loss, 45-62 to No. 1 seed Kentucky, was a success of sorts, considering Kentucky routed its first two opponents by 29 and 30 points, respectively.
“They didn’t really lose. They won the dream. We never had any expectations that they would make it as far as they did,” said Jim Osgood, Aaron’s father.
Osgood’s parents, Jim Osgood and Susan Richardson, flew to Jacksonville, Fla. hoping to see one game, as they had for the past two years. Cornell had won the Ivy League tournament for three straight seasons, but fell at the hands of stiffer competition in the first round of the 2008 and 2009 NCAA tournaments.
When the Bears won their first game, Osgood’s parents had to reschedule their flight back to Seattle. When they won the second game, Jim and Susan realized they weren’t going home for a while. They texted their 27-year-old daughter Mariah, who happened to be returning from a trip to France. They told her Aaron was in the Sweet 16 and asked her if she wanted to see the next game in Syracuse.
The Osgoods flew to Washington D.C., packed into Mariah’s Ford Escape and headed north for 6.5 hours.
Jim observed that he had packed for the Florida weather, not the frigid climate of upstate New York.
“I woke up one morning to 27 degrees and snow, but it was all worth it,” he said.
Aaron Osgood’s path to the top basketball program in the Ivy League is its own Cinderella story. At age 14, he didn’t even know how to play the sport.
He arrived at Overlake High School as a gawky, 6-foot-2 freshman with no concept of footwork or ball-handling skills, according to his former coach at Overlake, John Wiley.
But Osgood was a good athlete and by his senior year, he averaged 13 points and nine rebounds per game as a forward. With a 20-6 record, his team qualified for the 1A state playoffs for the first and only time in school history.
Based on his senior year performance, Osgood received some offers to play college ball for Division III programs, but he had bigger dreams.
“I really wanted to go Division I,” Osgood said in a 2008 interview. So he then opted for a post-graduate year at the Hill School, a private boarding school in Pennsylvania.
While there, he further developed his skills and added muscle to his frame in a more competitive high school league.
At Hill, Osgood averaged about nine points and seven rebounds per game. His team lost in the semi-finals of the league tournament, and finished runner-up in the state tournament. It was enough progress to catch the attention of basketball recruiters at Harvard and Cornell.
As a freshman at Cornell, Osgood played in nine games, for 26 minutes, scoring eight total points. He had high hopes of getting more minutes, but then a concussion sidelined him for most of his sophomore year. He played in just four of 32 games, logging in 15 minutes of playing time and scoring two points all season.
“I feel so bad for him because it wasted a year for his career,” said Steve Donahue Cornell’s coach.
Osgood logged about 30 minutes of playing time this season, scoring 10 points, including a dunk against Columbia University.
He added 10 pounds of muscle, shaved some body fat, and improved his shooting ability, especially against 7-foot-tall giants like Cornell’s starting center, Jeff Foote.
“To get a shot off against somebody who’s got four inches on you, plus that arm span is a lot tougher,” Osgood observed.
The perseverance may pay off, too. Donahue, said he expects Osgood to play a major role in the team next season.
There’s a precedent at Cornell for players making a big jump after three seasons of limited playing time. Forward Jon Jaques, who scored just 11 points as a junior, became a major force as a senior. In the 2009-2010 season, Jaques ended up leading the Ivys in three-point shooting percentage, averaged 6.9 points per game and accumulated 459 minutes of playing time during the regular season.
Donahue has hinted in other interviews that he sees Osgood has next year’s Jon Jaques.
“He’s our most improved player from September to now,” Donahue said. “I expect him to make great strides next year.”
2 comments:
Aro seems like an awesome person. His little mustache in the Alabama video was funny and he seems competent and confident on the court.
Did the writer refer to us as the Bears?
Post a Comment