Boclair: Ogilvy's departure creates big possibilities for Commodores

If the mock drafts are to be believed, it seems A.J. Ogilvy did not make the best decision when he made himself available for the NBA draft, passing up his final season of eligibility at Vanderbilt.

Even so, it probably was the best thing for the Commodores.

There’s no doubt that right now, Festus Ezeli is not the player that Ogilvy is. He lacks the feel and finesse that made Ogilvy a productive performer from the moment he set foot on campus.

Yet there seems no limit to the player that Ezeli, a native of Nigeria who came to Vanderbilt via Sacramento, Calif., can be. The only way for him to explore that potential is to play — and with Ogilvy out of the way, he now has that opportunity.

At 6-foot-11, Ezeli can run and jump similar to players half a foot shorter. He has a thick chest and sculpted arms that cut an intimidating presence in a basketball uniform.

He is a better fit for a team that has become increasingly athletic in recent years and includes Jeffery Taylor and Lance Goulbourne and Andre Walker and John Jenkins.

Perhaps most importantly, Ezeli wants to be a force. He talks about his desire to dominate games the way he often does practices. He clearly understands the value of intimidation and relishes the opportunity to incite the crowd with a dunk or a blocked shot — each of which he is quite capable of delivering.

Compare that with Ogilvy, who looked increasingly disinterested during his three years with the Commodores.

What made him that way is anybody’s guess. The fact is that his game lacked an obvious passion.

Perhaps that’s why — statistically speaking, at least — he did not get noticeably better during his three years in college. His scoring average dropped from his freshman to sophomore and his sophomore to junior years. The same was true of his shooting percentage, and his rebound average also
was at a three-season low in 2009-10.

Yet throughout all that time, he was far and away the best option coach Kevin Stallings had in the low post. So Stallings continued to play him and looked for opportunities to get Ezeli on the floor.

It’s likely now that Stallings will have no choice but to go with Ezeli, who was a soccer player for the majority of his youth.

It would be one thing if Ezeli had played basketball all his life and at 20 years old people still were talking about his potential. He didn’t. He never played before he joined an AAU team after high school and was discovered by Stallings and several other coaches at top programs who offered scholarships.

For the three years he’s been on campus (he was redshirted as a freshman), the vast majority of his experience has come in practices, and caoaches and teammates say he often is the best player in those sessions. Theoretically, therefore, the more he plays in games, the more he’ll be able to improve.

As for Ogilvy, he’ll sit by the phone Thursday, when the NBA conducts its annual two-round draft, and wait for it to ring.

Virtually all projections say it won’t. Scan the Internet and his name rarely — if ever — shows up among the lists of players the analysts expect to be selected.

He probably made the right decision, because it seems he already was as good as he was going to get in college. The fact that he did means the Commodores now have a chance to be even better at that position, and — it would follow — to become a much better team.