By Roscoe Nance


There are late bloomers in basketball, and then there is Kyle O’Quinn.
 
The former Norfolk State star only played one year of varsity ball in high school after logging limited minutes on the junior varsity squad his freshman and sophomore seasons, changing schools, not playing basketball his junior season and flirting with playing football.
 
Instead of giving up basketball, O’Quinn stepped away from football and blossomed on the hardwood his senior season at Campus High in Queen’s N.Y. He averaged 20 points, 12 rebounds and three blocks per game and was named First Team All-Queens and Third Team All-Public School Athletic League.
 
O’Quinn’s showing in his only year of high school ball earned him a scholarship to Norfolk State, where he blossomed into a full-fledged star. He was a two-time MEAC Defensive Player of the Year, MEAC Player of the Year and the Lou Henson Award recipient as the top mid-major player in the nation and led the Spartans to a historic upset in the NCAA Tournament. 
 
O’Quinn will be recognized for his accomplishments when he is inducted into the MEAC Hall of Fame on Thursday. Activities start with a welcome gathering at 9:30 a.m. during an awards program at the Sheraton Norfolk (Va.) Waterside Hotel The Hall of Fame class, which also includes South Carolina State football All-American Dwayne Harper, Hampton two-sport All-American Jerome Mathis, Florida A&M Assistant Sports Information Director Alvin Hollins, and Jessica Worsley-Bond, who led Maryland Eastern Shore to its first bowling national championship.
 
The class will also be recognized during halftime of the 6 p.m. men’s tournament game at the Norfolk Scope Arena that same day.
 
“My initial reaction, obviously, was excitement,” O’Quinn, a seven-year NBA veteran who currently plays for he Indiana Pacers, said of his selection. “But I was more excited for my mom to find out. When things start rolling your way, I won’t say I was expecting it, but those things are down the line waiting for you. You just take your time to get to things like that.”
 
It’s unlikely that the Hall of Fame would have been in O’Quinn’s future had he not followed his heart and quit football in high school and stuck with basketball. The only reason he went out for the team in the first place was because his best friend was the starting quarterback. O’Quinn was the backup, and he thought it would be cool if he played football too.
 
“I wanted to hang out with my friend; I didn’t really love it,” he said. “I had the smarts for it. I knew playbook backward and forward. I got some college interest. But I didn’t want to take that opportunity from somebody who loved the game more than I did whether it was on my team or someplace else  I gave it up to give the opportunity to somebody else on the team and take the attention away from me.”
 
O’Quinn got the attention of Norfolk State coach Robert Jones, who had been head coach at Saint Mary’s High Manhasset, N. Y., and was an assistant coach for the Spartans at the time. Jones got a tip about O’Quinn and went to see him play. He came away impressed with the way O’Quinn, at 6-foot-8, created traps playing at the top of the press on defense and made 15- to 16-foot jumpers on the offensive end.
 
Norfolk State offered O’Quinn a scholarship – the only offer he received even though he led his team to 24-5 record, a divisional championship and a trip to the quarterfinals of the city tournament.
 
“Once they offered me a full athletic scholarship, I looked at my parents and we shook our heads yes,” O’Quinn said. “There was no discussion after that.”
 
O’Quinn said he wasn’t disheartened that he didn’t get more scholarship offers.
 
“Actually, it made my job easier to know exactly what I wanted to do,” he said. “I didn’t have to pick and think what if I had picked this university over that university. The university picked me. It was a perfect fit.”
 
O’Quinn made an immediate impact at Norfolk State. He played in all 31 games and averaged 5.3 points and 3.4 rebounds a game his freshman season. He became a full-time starter as a sophomore and was named Second Team All-MEAC. He averaged a team-high 8.7 rebounds and shot 54.9% from the floor, best in the MEAC, while averaging 11.5 points a game.
 
O’Quinn came into full bloom his junior and senior seasons. He was the MEAC Defensive Player of the Year both seasons while averaging double figures rebounding and scoring each year. In 2012, he became the first athlete in MEAC history to be named conference Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year, and he led the Spartans on historical postseason run in the first NCAA Tournament appearance in school history
 
The Spartans, the No 15 seed, upset second-seeded Missouri 86-84 in the first round as O’Quinn scored 26 points and grabbed 14 rebounds. It was only the fifth time a No. 15 seed had beaten a No. 2 seed – and the third such occurrence in MEAC history.
 
“We just knew,” O’Quinn said, recalling the 21.5-point underdog Spartans’ victory. “We had so much fun that year. We were all seniors and we bonded. We had underclassmen that looked up to us to as if we couldn’t do any wrong. We really wanted to capitalize and maximize that season. We really didn’t want it to end and be one of those teams that talk about memories among ourselves. That’s what pushed us through the MEAC Tournament to get that first double championship (regular-season and tournament) that Norfolk State had seen.
 
“When we got chance to get on that big stage, it was different for us. Yes, we were nervous. Yes, the odds were stacked against us. But you give a team a little confidence. We had all of that boiling up. A team like that, as good as they were, gave us confidence. We felt we were in the gym; we were in the building. We wanted to finish the game the right way. The only way we could be remembered was if we won that game.”
 
O’Quinn rode the wave of his performance against Missouri into the NBA Draft. He was the MVP of the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament, a pre-draft event for seniors, after averaging 11.7, points, 11.7 rebounds and 3.4 rebounds a game. The Orlando Magic selected O’Quinn on the second round of the 2012 draft.
 
He spent three years with the Magic before his hometown New York Knicks acquired him in four-year, $16 million transaction. O’Quinn opted out of the final year of his contract with the Knicks last summer and signed a one-year, $4.5 million deal with the Pacers.
 
He says playing in the MEAC equipped him for whatever lay ahead for him after he graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies.
 
“Playing in the MEAC prepared me for life,” he said. “Any job I would have taken, I would have been prepared. The university did a great job. Going into the draft and pre-draft workouts and combine knowing that you’re the underdog and the only way you can get noticed is you have to compete against those big schools players that helped me. It put that chip on my shoulder. When I went into workouts, GMs could see my fight and see what I could bring to the team versus going in for measurements and numbers and metrics and things like that. I put my foot on the gas as soon as I left school because I had the university counting on me to make it.”
 
O’Quinn still plays with that chip on his shoulder, even though he has established himself in the NBA.
 
“Of course,” he said. “I wouldn’t change it now. My career, my life has been pretty good. I wouldn’t change nothing at this point.”