Exclusive: AK Okereke Shares How it Feels to Make His First Trip to March Madness – Sports Illustrated

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OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. – Vanderbilt big man AK Okereke jogged out of the western-most tunnel out onto the court at the Paycom Center. The arena that is usually home to the defending NBA Champion Oklahoma City Thunder is the host to eight teams in this season’s NCAA Tournament with orange stripes cutting across both the home and away sidelines of the court.
For a lot of college basketball players at power conference programs, making the NCAA Tournament is something that they can get used to and thus take for granted. But not for Okereke. Okereke has seen the lowest lows that March basketball offers before the big dance officially commences. And because of that, the steps he took as he went on the floor for Vanderbilt’s open practice for its Round of 64 against McNeese will be a memory he holds forever.
“It’s pretty cool. It’s pretty cool even just being in this locker room. It’s definitely been a great start to the experience and hopefully you can make a lot more memories,” Okereke told Vandy On SI as he reflected on how it felt now that he is officially living in the March Madness experience.
Okereke is a player that can be counted on not to take Vanderbilt’s trip to the tournament for granted. A season ago, he was a premier player in the Ivy League for the Cornell Big Red. After leading the conference in field goal percentage, he took his Cornell team on an Ivy League Tournament run to the conference championship game.
But that is where Okereke experienced the harsh realities of March basketball, losing to top-seeded Yale 90-84 in the Ivy League Championship. It was a feeling that so many athletes at mid-major schools experience: the feeling of knowing you could have had it all, but ended up with nothing.
“Yeah, it’s definitely a different setup. It’s kind of like all or nothing last year where if you didn’t win the championship you obviously weren’t going to March Madness,” Okereke said as he thought back to the tough road mid-major programs have to get to the NCAA Tournament.
But this year, there was no worry. There was no doubt and there has been no doubt all season that Vanderbilt was a tournament team regardless of if it won the SEC or not. The Commodores earned the right to qualify for an at-large spot without needing to go on a magical run at Bridgestone Arena – though they did produce magic with its second place tournament run anyway.
That brought everything to the NCAA Tournament Selection Show on March 15. Vanderbilt knew it was in, it was just a matter of what seed, what opponent and what place it would play. When the South Region was revealed, Okereke and the rest of his teammates saw the graphic unveil their school name and logo on the screen as No. 5 seed taking on No. 12 seed McNeese. For Okereke, all that mattered in the moment was the satisfaction and feeling of knowing he helped his team earn a spot in a tournament he had never played in before.
“It’s a special moment, a special moment for sure. One that I’ll definitely never forget,” Okereke recalled as he took Vandy On SI through the moment he saw the name “Vanderbilt” pop on the screen.
While the team feels that its body of work justifies a higher seed, all that matters now is doing the best it can to go on a National Championship run.
“There is a bit of disappointment like ‘Oh we should have been this.’ But at the end of the day, the seeding really doesn’t matter a whole lot. You really have to go play. You get to play a good team and then after that you play against another good team,” Okereke said.
Regardless, Okereke is now experiencing one of the best feelings basketball teams can feel this month. He has been on the mid-major side of things. Now in the position of being at a power conference school, Okereke feels more appreciative of the sport of college basketball as a whole after experiencing what he sees as a winning culture under head coach Mark Byington.
“Yeah, it’s definitely good to get a bit of diversity experience there. It’s obviously one of the reasons why I came here. It’s a very good program. I know coach B [Byington] has won everywhere he’s gone. I had a lot of confidence that we were going to make March Madness,” Okereke told Vandy On SI.
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Graham Baakko is a writer for Vanderbilt Commodores On SI, primarily covering football, basketball and baseball. Graham is a recent graduate from the University of Alabama, where he wrote for The Crimson White, WVUA-FM, WVUA 23 as he covered a variety of Crimson Tide sports. He also covered South Carolina athletics as a sportswriting intern for GamecockCentral.
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