Obinna Oleka

It was his 15th double-double of the season, tying Ike Diogu for the most in school history since they joined the then-Pac-10 Conference in 1978.

Obinna Oleka (born November 4, 1993) is an American professional basketball player for Piratas de La Guaira of the Venezuelan Basketball League.

He played college basketball at Arizona State.

Oleka grew up in Washington, D.C., with his mother and brother.

He played high school basketball at Florida Christian Institute in Cape Coral, Florida, where he averaged 24 points and 11 rebounds as a senior and earned an invitation to the ESBC All-Star Game.

He also played Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) basketball with DC Assault.

Coming out of high school, Oleka was considered a three-star recruit by Rivals.com.

However, he was academically ineligible to play for a major college, so he instead started playing junior college basketball at the State College of Florida, Manatee–Sarasota (SCF Manatee–Sarasota) in 2012.

As a freshman, Oleka recorded 10.9 points and 6.2 rebounds per game.

He was named NJCAA Division I Player of the Week for the week of February 18 to 24, 2013, after a game against Hillsborough Community College in which he put up 32 points, 17 rebounds and 8 assists off the bench.

He recorded 22 points, 13 rebounds and four blocks in a 95–73 victory over St. Petersburg College, securing a runner-up finish in the Suncoast Conference and a berth in the state tournament.

In the opening round, Oleka had 29 points and 12 rebounds in their 90–77 loss to the College of Central Florida.

As a sophomore, Oleka averaged 25.6 points and 13.6 rebounds per game.

In his first game of the season, he recorded 27 points, 19 rebounds and eight assists in a 92–83 win against Miami Dade College.

However, he only played in five games before he was suspended from the team for violating team rules, and he left the school in December 2013.

Oleka had signed a letter of intent (LOI) early on in the season to play for the Texas Longhorns, choosing them over from schools such as Gonzaga, Old Dominion, Oregon State, Southern Miss, South Carolina, and Utah State, but the offer from Texas was revoked after his suspension.

He spent the 2014–15 season off from basketball while taking classes at Cecil College in North East, Maryland.

In the 2015 offseason, nearly two years after playing his last competitive game, Oleka got a call from newly hired Arizona State head coach Bobby Hurley, and he was offered a scholarship to play NCAA Division I basketball for the Sun Devils.

Oleka, who was ranked a top 20 junior college recruit by jucorecruiting.com at the time, was also Hurley's first recruit after taking over the program in April.

He made his debut for the team against Sacramento State on November 13, 2015, 705 days after his last college basketball game.

In 32 games, he had averages of 9.6 points and 6.1 rebounds per contest while the Sun Devils lost in the quarterfinals of the 2015 Pac-12 Conference tournament.

After almost two months on the bench, he permanently replaced third-year forward Savon Goodman in the starting-lineup in their second conference regular-season game against USC on January 7, 2016.

In 2016–17, Oleka started all but one of the 33 games he played, averaging 12.5 points and 9.9 rebounds per game.

Measuring 6’8, he played at the center position for much of the season in an undersized lineup, often playing with four guards.

On February 26, 2017, he grabbed his 10th rebound of the game to seal a one-point upset of USC.

He broke the record two weeks later, when he posted a career-high 27 points and 13 rebounds in an overtime win against Stanford in the first round of the 2017 Pac-12 Conference tournament.

However, the Sun Devils lost by a score of 80–57 to Oregon, again in the quarterfinals, in what was Oleka's final college game.

His 327 rebounds that year were the third-best mark in school history at the time.

Oleka played at the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament in April, averaging 9.3 points and 8.7 rebounds per game.

In May, he had pre-draft workout with the Utah Jazz, but went undrafted in the 2017 NBA draft.

Oleka signed his first professional contract with Italian Lega Basket Serie A team New Basket Brindisi in July.

He played in a limited role off the bench for the club, appearing in 13 games and averaging 2.5 points and 2.8 rebounds per contest.

Oleka joined Argentine team Argentino de Junín in October, replacing the outgoing Calvin Crawford.

However, after playing only two games in the 2018 Torneo Súper 20 playoffs against Obras, he was cut from the team the following month.

He was subsequently replaced by Leron Black.

In December 2018, Oleka reached a deal to play with the St. John's Edge of the National Basketball League of Canada for the remainder of the 2018–19 season.

He made his NBL Canada debut in a win over the Island Storm on December 14, adding 12 points and a team-leading 11 rebounds on the same night Glen "Big Baby" Davis made his Edge debut.

Two days later, in a rematch against the Island Storm, Oleka scored 12 points off the bench and again led his team in rebounds with seven to extend their winning streak to three games after a 1–5 start.

He grabbed a season-high 24 rebounds in a 109–100 victory at home against the London Lightning on January 19 for their sixth consecutive win.

In 23 games with the Edge, he averaged 7.6 points and 10.4 rebounds in 24.8 minutes per game.