Iowa offers emerging 2020 big man

When you are rebuilding a program, it’s always good to have a big man to build around.

At Worcester Academy in Massachusetts, James Sullivan was trying to build his program up. He had put together a very solid group of young players, but the missing piece was a big man. Thankfully he found it on a team trip to Manchester, England.

“We were playing in the Harris Tournament in Manchester in December of 2016 and we had a smaller and younger team. We played the 18U national team from England and they had this big left handed kid who was only 15 years old and he was making three pointers from behind the FIBA line,” Sullivan said.

That player happened to be Josh Ogundele and Sullivan joked that he chased him around the gym after their game trying to gather any information he could to get in touch with the big man from England.

The pursuit and persuasion worked and Ogundele joined Worcester Academy in his sophomore year and Sullivan began the process of building the now 6-foot-10 and 265 big man into a potential player at the high major level.

“He can really shoot it and he has great hands and feet,” Sullivan said. “When he got here, we needed to work on getting him into better shape and that happened about midway through his first year with us. He’s a very coachable kid who just continues to get better.”

With his size, strength, and shooting touch, college recruiters were drawn to Ogundele immediately and the low to mid-major programs were offering. What hadn’t happened until Thursday was a high major program putting a scholarship offer on the table.

Iowa assistant coach Billy Taylor had been stopping by Worcester Academy in recent weeks. He was also recruiting 2022 point guard Dasonte Bowen, who plays with Ogundele, and liked what he continued to see from the 2020 big man.

Thursday morning at 7 a.m., Taylor was back in the gym and this time he brought along Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery.

“Coach Taylor was up here about a week ago and he liked what he saw from Josh. They were here at 7 a.m. this morning to watch our workout and Fran offered Josh a scholarship before they left.”

Ogundele’s mother and stepfather are coming over from England in the next week and they plan on visiting Rhode Island with him and a potential visit to Iowa is still being finalized for a future date and time.