Sunday, May 1, 2011

Indiana guard Oladipo shows he has talents besides basketball

Often we showcase talented athletes here on The Dagger, but today we're going to look at an athlete's talent -- off the court.

Indiana freshman guard Victor Oladipo used the Spirit of Indiana Showcase -- Indiana's new year-end athletics awards ceremony ? as a coming out party to show off his vocal chords.

During the event, Oladipo covered Usher's R&B hit "U Got It Bad" and it's pretty good. Oladipo almost sounds as though he's lip synching until he pauses during the song to show that he's not. The sunglasses and the preppy look are a nice touch as well. All he's missing is the fedora.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not telling young Mr. Oladipo to abandon his promising basketball career for a shot at American Idol. In fact, Oladipo was one of the few highlights of the Hoosiers 12-20 season. He averaged 7.4 points per game, shot 54.7 percent from the field, averaged 3.7 rebounds per game and 1.1 steals. As a freshman on a team that's still trying to dig its way out from under NCAA sanctions, that's not bad and it's fair to assume that he'll only get better as he gets older.

The same could be said for Oladipo's voice. Not to go all Simon Cowell here, but there were times when he was a little off pitch. Still, it was a nice rendition (probably better than most of the folks on American Idol the past couple years) and you have to give the young man some credit for getting up in front of all of those people and covering one of the more popular songs in R&B in 2001. That's the other thing, Oladipo was, what? Probably 8 or 9 years old when the song originally came out? Props to him for keeping it old school.

(Thanks, College Basketball Nation)

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