There’s an age-old question in sports – should a player lose his job because of an injury? Or, in the case of Bambale Osby, should he lose it due to sickness?
Osby sat out Friday’s game against Lehigh with a stomach ailment, and freshman center Braxton Dupree filled in admirably, scoring 14 points in his place.
Last night against Illinois, with Osby available to play, coach Gary Williams opted to start Dupree again. And it worked.
Dupree scored 10 points and pulled in five rebounds against a huge Illinois front line. In the first half, the freshman scored six consecutive points for the Terps and began to thrive in an offense predicated on going inside to the post players.
“He’s a freshman and he’s learning how to play, and he’ll have his peaks and valleys,” Williams said. “All we asked of Braxton to do when he came here was work very hard. He’s starting to see some results from his hard work. Our players aren’t afraid of getting him the ball when he’s open.”
While Dupree has prospered from being in the starting lineup and likely will stay there, it will not be a case of Osby losing his job. He’s merely changing jobs. That new job is one that fit him perfectly last season.
With Ekene Ibekwe ahead of him on the depth chart, Osby flourished as the team’s sixth man last year, coming off the bench and providing a surge of energy and intensity.
In his old (and now new) role, Osby did just that again last night in 21 minutes against the Illini.
“Bambale Osby coming off the bench certainly gave us a lift whenever he came into the game,” Williams said. “Sometimes a player like Boom, because he is a senior and he’s pretty smart, he can watch the first four minutes and pick up some things, and go play better than if he had started the game.”
Even though Osby played so well in that role last year, Williams thrust him into the starting lineup at the beginning of this year by default because there were no other proven big men to put at center. Now Dupree has proven himself to some degree.
The burly freshman was completely ineffective and even looked disoriented on the court during his first few games, but Dupree has steadily improved each game and he now appears capable of being a solid starter.
“Every day I’m trying to play better and build on the last time,” Dupree said.
And he has.
Dupree even impressed the man he supplanted in the starting lineup.
“He was great, man, really dominant on the inside. He’s just a big dude,” Osby said. “He really opened up the things for the guards scoring all the points in the middle.”
Dupree said after the game that he is beginning to feel comfortable as a starter. The increased comfort level has shown, as he is averaging 12 points per game in two starts compared with the nine points he scored in his first five games combined.
With the Terps’ success as a team, the lineup should stay the same.
“If that’s the way coach wants to keep it, then it’s fine with me,” Osby said.
In the team locker room after the game, Terps legend Len Elmore went over to Dupree and congratulated him on his performance. Then Elmore walked over to Osby, and praised the senior for his role in the team’s victory.
“Good job off the bench, man. That’s the way to get it done,” Elmore said. “That’s how you win.”
The two thick-bodies were never on the court at the same time during the game against Illinois, and they rarely ever play on the same team during practice. Osby said that’s because “nobody else is in the same weight class. It wouldn’t be fair.”
Williams said he plans to try them together sometime in the future, though. With the success they’ve both had and the contrasting skill sets they possess, that combination could be overwhelming to smaller teams.
Regardless of how they play each night – either together or separately – bringing Osby off the bench is the logical and triumph-tested coaching move.
After the final buzzer sounded last night, Osby ran over to his unofficial fan section, rubbed students’ mock afros, and skipped into the tunnel.
Even as a sixth man, he’ll get his love.
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