ONE on ONE WITH OMARI LAWRENCE

by Pat Stevens


Pat Stevens (PS): -Feeling when committed…

Omari Lawrence (OL): It was great. Me and my family and the coaches had met and we decided that’s the place for me. We had the press conference later near a gym I grew up playing at and a bunch of the media came.

PS -If not St. Johns…

OL: I can’t even answer that really. But my final schools were Louisville, Memphis, Marquette, UConn, Pitt and Xavier.

PS -Positives from the prep school experience…

OL: I got to play against 7-footers every night, got more serious with school work , had to be real independent doing things on my own, and our strength coach helped me develop my body. He helped me tone down after coming in a little overweight and it really gets you ready for college and especially the Big East where it’s physical.

PS -Any previous prep school players you spoke with…

OL: I knew Tyrone Nash (Notre Dame/Northfield Mount Hermon, MA) and Darius Gabriel (Winchendon, MA).

PS -Best game of the year…

OL: My most consistent was against Notre Dame Prep, we lost in OT. It was so up and down. There were a lot of lead changes, it was a really physical game, we were attacking the basket and getting easy baskets. I was guarding Sean Kilpatrick (Cincinnati) and we were scoring on each other and getting stops. It was a back and forth, high energy game. It was a fun game to play in.

PS -On the National Prep Tournament first round loss to eventual champion Tilton (N.H.)…

OL: It was a tough one for us. We played them earlier and beat them by like 30. We came into the game thinking we were going to win against an easy team and they made the game tough for us.

PS -On the runner-up finish in the New England Class A Playoffs…

OL: Every night we played against a tough team. There were no breaks, every time we had to bring it. In the championship against Bridgton we were up 20 with eight minutes to go. You could say we fell asleep. It was really rough for us to be up by so much and lose like that. We came out knocking down every shot and were real confident. I think we got tired as a team, our confidence died down and they started coming back. It was very hard for us. We didn’t know what to do they were scoring so fast.

PS -On February’s National Prep School Invitational…

OL: Previously that week we were hearing we were going to lose to Tilton by ex amount of points because they were undefeated and that Northfield Mount Hermon had a great shooter who was going to light us up. We wanted to show people we were No. 1 and we played well both those games and picked up the wins. We had won 16 straight around that time.

PS -On November’s National Tip Off…

OL: Everybody was trying to find themselves. We weren’t in sync. We couldn’t score against Patterson and they had already played like 12 games. It was hard but we bounced back and put together a good season.

PS -Regrets from career…

OL: I think if we had stayed home and played for St. Raymond (NY), me and Kevin (Parrom) would’ve run through the CHSAA. But it would have been less competitive for us. The league wasn’t that strong this year. A lot of players moved on to college. So I’d say we bettered ourselves by coming to South Kent. The mindset and whole structure of it helped us. But regrets, I would have loved to have won the city championship our sophomore and junior year.