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Greensboro — Long before a triumphant evening in New York City in late March,Robert O’Kelley couldn’t do anything right.
Wake Forest’s point guard, a star in his two previous years, couldn’t shoot from inside. He couldn’t hit a 3. He couldn’t pass, or dribble.
Most of all, O’Kelley couldn’t explain where his game had disappeared to during his junior season. He made 1 of 9 shots and committed four turnovers in the Deacs’ near-miss against a ranked Maryland team. Against Duke, he was 2-for-10 with four turnovers in a Devil blowout.
O’Kelley’s struggles rubbed off quickly onto his teammates. Wake lost nine of 13 games in one stretch of the Atlantic Coast Conference season.
Soon, though, shades of the player who scored 17 points a game as a freshman and sophomore began to emerge. The Demon Deacons won their last two ACC regular-season games, then upset North Carolina in the conference tournament.
A berth in the NCAATournament didn’t come as hoped, but Wake went into the National Invitation Tournament and proceeded to win five in a row. That last win, 71-61 over Notre Dame, came courtesy the NIT’s Most Valuable Player, a small guard who had 19 points in the championship game after draining five 3-pointers.
That player was O’Kelley.
“He had three horrendous weeks that mirrored the play of our team — or vice versa,”Wake head coach Dave Odom said. “I think he has a chance to have a more consistent year. I think he’s had two great years and one good year, but everybody has a tendency to remember your low points.”
Everybody but O’Kelley, that is.
“My career from a freshman to now, I wouldn’t trade it for the world,” he said entering his senior year. “You’re going to have ups and downs, but you’ve got to deal with things like that. I’m looking forward to having a really good year this year.”
Odom thinks O’Kelley will have a good season, too, and it doesn’t have so much to do with the individual as the team.
In his first two seasons, O’Kelley scored a lot because he didn’t have much help. Early last year, Wake’s post players took a while to wake up. The emergence of the inside game, especially from Darius Songaila, helped O’Kelley immeasurably.
“Robert was put in a position as a freshman and a sophomore that he had to score points for our team to win because we did not have as solid an inside game as our teams have had in the past,”Odom said. “Toward the last six weeks, Darius came on strong as an inside force, and if you go back and track it, that’s whenRobert’s play began to improve as well.”
Songaila didn’t just come on as a force, he exploded. The 6-foot-9, 245-pound junior with the quick moves and soft touch reeled off five straight 20-plus point games while O’Kelley floundered.
That was the boost O’Kelley needed. He responded in the NIT, leading the Deacs in scoring in three of the five wins.
“With Robert struggling last year, I think we needed somebody to step up and the team needed me more than ever,”Songaila said. “There was a five-game streak where I played pretty well, then Rob came back from his struggling and we started playing better basketball.”
It may only get better for Wake, predicted fourth in the league in a preseason vote by the media. Songaila arrived in Winston-Salem more talented than ever, with a bronze medal in his suitcase from the Lithuanian Olympic team. He’s been playing basketball nonstop since this time last year and can’t wait to play some more.
“It was kind of different because it wasn’t a boring type of basketball. You finish up with the NITChampionship, then you go on to the Olympics with all the experiences you have, then you come back for another great season. I’m not sick of it,”Songaila said. “Playing against the highest-level players in the world, you see you can really play basketball against them and that helps a lot.”
An injury to center Rafael Vidaurreta will force Songaila to play an even bigger role in the first four weeks of the season. But the Deacs also have the luxury of more experienced forwards in sophomore Josh Howard and junior Antwan Scott, along with senior center Josh Shoemaker, for O’Kelley to get the ball to.
“I expect Robert to have a good year from beginning to end mainly because he now has the luxury of playing with a solid inside game,”Odom said. “He understands the value of that.”
O’Kelley also knows he won’t always be the primary point guard all the time, thanks to the emergence late last year of Ervin Murray. But he won’t mind playing a little 2-guard as well.
“If that’s the position I need to play for the team to do well, then I’ll definitely do that,”O’Kelley said. “I can get more steals, more assists, help get some rebounds. There are so many little things you can do in basketball. You want to be a complete player and that’s what I’ve worked on.”
Luckily, he was able to work on his game this summer with the sweet taste of victory in his mouth instead of dwelling on the dismal midseason slump he endured. This year, if a bad stretch hits, he knows all too well it can be shaken.
“We had some tough times last year and we took a lot of things out of those tough times,”O’Kelley said. “We believe that if that ever happens again, we can get out of that quicker. If we have that one bad game, we can bounce back quicker and win the next one.”
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Sportswriter Steve Hanf covers ACCbasketball for the Post.
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Steve Hanf