Tom Archdeacon: Foster on target at OSU
By
Tom Archdeacon
Dayton Daily News
COLUMBUS | When it comes to bucks, Je'Kel Foster is handling this long-awaited opportunity a lot better than the first one.
Foster grew up in Natchez, Miss., and calls himself "a country guy, a down south guy, an outside guy."
He likes to hunt and fish with his dad and especially his granddad, Willie Foster Sr., who was there that day Je'Kel had his first big moment as a deer hunter.
"Oh yeah, I 'member that day. He musta been just 12 or 13, maybe not even that old," Willie Sr. said with a quiet chuckle into his cell phone the other day as he sat in his boat fishing for white perch on the Little River outside Jonesville, La. "I was in one (deer) stand and he was in another. And here comes this buck across the bayou. Comes right toward Je'Kel, but he had fell asleep up there."
Je'Kel picked up the story at Value City Arena as he readied for basketball practice.
"I woke up and there was this buck right in front of me. I got nervous and panicked. I fired and missed and he was gone. At first I was shocked. I'd practiced and practiced for this moment. Took that (30.06 rifle) and shot at targets and cans. ... Guess it's kind of funny now, but, you know, I've been with my grandfather when he's got deer, but to this day, I've never got a buck."
Well to manipulate that old saying:
If you can't bag 'em, join 'em.
And so now Je'Kel Foster is an Ohio State Buckeye.
After years of wandering around in the basketball woods — spending a year at junior college in Big Spring, Texas, then following his coach to Marianna, Fla. to play at Chipola Junior College, getting recruited by OSU's Jim O'Brien, seeing him fired and still deciding to join the Bucks and then spending the first 20 games last season as a back-up guard — Foster finally lined up his sights on a starting job.
This time — bull's-eye!
As the 19th ranked, 12-1 Buckeyes meet 14th-ranked Michigan State in a nationally televised game at 4:30 this afternoon at Value City Arena, Foster is the top guard in the nation when it comes to shooting accuracy, is second in the nation in 3-point proficiency and is the one player OSU coach Thad Matta believes he must have on the floor at all times.
That's why the 6-foot-2 senior guard leads the team in minutes played (averaging 31.3 per game) and just about every other category that matters.
He's the team's leading scorer (15.2 ppg) and is tops in field goal percentage (61.3 percent), 3-point accuracy (53.8 percent), assists, steals and, except for Ivan Harris' 2-for-2 on the season, leads in free throw shooting (32 for 38, 84.2 percent). He's third in rebounds.
"His leadership and attitude and his sense of toughness takes this team to another level," said senior center Terrence Dials. "Without him, we wouldn't be where we are right now."
The Bucks are one of the surprise teams in the nation this year. Most people thought they wouldn't command a national stage until next season — when Matta's super recruiting class, the Thad Five, featuring Dunbar's Daequan Cook and Indianapolis Lawrence North's 7-foot Greg Oden arrive — but this year's team, said Foster, wanted "to be something special and make a mark."
What kind of mark?
It might be a floor burn or a big bruise. At least that's how it sounds if you listen to Matt Sylvester talk about Foster:
"I can honestly say, without a doubt, Je'Kel Foster is the toughest player I ever played with. He's maybe not the most skilled, but he's the most fierce competitor. He plays harder than anyone I've ever seen. He's diving for loose balls, throwing his body all over the floor, making plays normal players don't make. And he doesn't seem to get tired. It's that attitude that bleeds into the rest of us and makes us all tougher."
Why is Foster so tough?
"Je'Kel is a kid who's had to earn everything he's gotten and I think that drives," Matta said. "He wasn't that highly recruited. A lot of people didn't know about him and of those who did, some told me. 'Boy, we looked at him and we just weren't sure.' A lot of times we miss on kids."
It could be folks just weren't looking at the right spot. They should have focused on his tattooed left biceps. That's where, beneath a picture of a baby spinning a basketball on his finger, are the words "Born In It."
"That's a picture of me as a baby," Foster beamed. "My mom still carries that same picture in her wallet." He started laughing, "Now I wasn't spinning a ball back then. I added that, but I was born into it."
His dad, Willie. Jr., was a shooting guard at Alcorn State. Yolanda, Je'Kel's 5-foot-11 mother, played basketball at a Natchez high school. "For Je'Kel's first birthday, he got a basketball and a goal," Yolanda said. "He took to it right off."
As soon as Je'Kel could throw a ball up to a regulation rim, he was playing his dad one-on-one.
"I never let him win," Willie Jr. said. "I told him. 'When you get in the real world, ain't nobody gonna give you nothing.' I made him earn it and that's why when he finally beat me, it meant something.
When Je'Kel's ACT score fell short and it meant he'd have to sit out a season at an NCAA Division I school, Willie Jr. was glad he chose the junior college route: "I had to sit my first year at Alcorn and I think you lose something on the sidelines. I think it's better to be playing."
After a season at Howard Junior College in Texas — where he averaged 15.3 ppg. on a team that went 30-2 — he went to Chipola, where he won first team All-America honors and was named the Florida Junior College Player of the Year. Because the SEC has a rule prohibiting a recruit from playing at two junior colleges, Foster couldn't go to Louisiana State, which was interested.
Deciding to stick with OSU after O'Brien firing was, in Yolanda's words, "the best move Je'Kel ever made. He loves his teammates and coaches and the area. And the fans have been great."
The one downer was Hurricane Katrina, which submerged Yolanda's apartment in New Orleans and destroyed almost everything she had. Although she now lives and works in Baton Rouge, she did return to her home and was able to salvage her son's high school diploma and a few trophies which had been on a top shelf, just above the lapping waters.
Back in Natchez — some 175 miles from New Orleans and the storm's main destruction — Foster said a couple of his most prized trophies had remained safe:
"That's where I got some of the big bass I caught and had mounted."
Out on that river the other day, Willie Sr. had to agree:
"Oh that boy can catch some fish, now — crappies, perch, catfish, blue gill, bass — he's pretty good."
And deer?
"Well, "said Willie Sr., "he sure is good shooting that basketball."
And so it goes:
If you can't bag em, join 'em.
