How Oso Ighodaro developed into the linchpin of Marquette’s beautiful offense

Shortly after arriving at Marquette in the spring of 2021, Shaka Smart flew to the hometown of every player on the roster. They were all home finishing school because of COVID-19, and most, Smart says, were not in the most “receptive places.”

Except for Oso Ighodaro.

The freshman who played just 38 minutes his first season excitedly called his mom when Smart got the Golden Eagles’ coaching job. Texas, where Smart had coached before coming to Marquette, had been Ighodaro’s other finalist in recruiting.

“He was super appreciative,” Smart said of his visit to Chandler, Ariz., that spring. “There was no entitlement. Man, I just got really good energy from him.”

Smart had no idea at the time the potential of the 6-foot-11 Ighodaro, who three years later is a projected NBA lottery pick and the linchpin to the most aesthetically pleasing offense in college basketball. Smart’s former assistant, Luke Yaklich, had led Ighodaro’s recruitment at Texas.

“I guess I didn’t have a great sense for his game,” Smart said. “I should have known more.”

When Ighodaro returned to Marquette’s campus in April 2021, Smart tested his devotion. By that time, most of the roster had hit the transfer portal, and only three scholarship players remained. The other two were injured, so Ighodaro had all of his coach’s attention. Workouts started with a ball on the ground, and Ighodaro had to pick it up and dunk it as many times in a row as he could. He estimates he got to 70 dunks. Then he had to complete full-court layups eight times down and back.

“I’ve been doing this a long time,” Marquette strength coach Todd Smith said, “and that’s the hardest I’ve seen somebody get pushed.”

After a week of intense workouts, Ighodaro told the coaches he needed a day to decide on his future. All his friends had transferred, and he was drawing plenty of interest from other schools.

“I wanted to be two feet in if I was gonna keep going,” he says.

The next day, he went into Smart’s office and told him he was all in.

“I knew that week they were already pushing me harder than I’d worked my whole freshman year,” Ighodaro said. “So I knew I had more, and I knew that they were gonna get it out of me.”

Ighodaro is a rarity in this era — a patient basketball player. His father didn’t allow him to play year-round competitive basketball until he was a freshman in high school.

Osaro Ighodaro was also late to the sport. Osaro grew up in Nigeria and played professional soccer at age 15. When he was 18, he was approached by the Nigerian national team coach about playing basketball. “I didn’t want anything to do with it,” Osaro told the Arizona Daily Sun in a 1988 profile. Two weeks later, after playing for the first time, Osaro was on the Nigerian national team.

That began a winding career that included two seasons at Northern Arizona and a brief professional stint in Belgium. He earned a doctoral degree from NAU and…