Know Your Team: Olu Ashaolu
St. John's Edge
6'7
Forward
From Brampton, Ontario
Better late than never for the St. John Edge, who enlist the offensive abilities of veteran Olu Ashaolu to round out their regular season and help lift them in the playoffs.
Ashaolu was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and his family moved to Canada shortly after. At age 14 he moved to America to better improve his game. A top basketball prospect at the end of his senior year with Christian Life Center Academy in Humble, Texas, in the same year Ashaolu represented Canada at the 2006 Under-18 Americas Championship, finishing fourth overall.
In 2008, he joined the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs in the NCAA. He improved year-on-year, averaging 5.3 points and 4.3 rebounds as a freshman, 10.7 points and 8.1 rebounds as a sophomore and 14.2 points and 9.4 rebounds as a junior, where he also named to the Western Athletic Conference defensive team. Senior year he transferred to the Oregon Ducks, leading the team in field goal percentage and offensive rebounding.
He made his professional debut in 2012 for Caceres in Spain, averaging 10.3 points per game. The following season he joined Evreux in France, improving on his stats of the last season with an average 11.5 points per contest.
In 2014, Ashaolu made the move to Japan, signing with Hamamatsu Phoenix, posting 15.8 points on 59% field shooting and 7.0 rebounds, helping the team capture the league title.
He stayed in Japan the following season, but playing for Osaka Evessa. He re-joined Hamamatsu (now called San-En NeoPhoenix) in 2016, and the Sendai 89ers the next season, averaging 18.5 points and 7.6 rebounds per game.
Ashaolu, in 2018, signed with the Road Warriors in the Philippines Basketball Association. Despite suffering an injury in a game against Batang Pier, he returned to the court and scored 27 points on the game. That injury hampered him the rest of the season, and he was ultimately dropped from the team.
He joined the St. John's Edge in February 2019, posting 11 points in his debut. He went on to make seven double-digit performances in the season, two of which he went over the twenty-point mark. With an average 10.2 points and 5.8 rebounds in sixteen games for the Edge, his impact for his new team has been immediate and he has shined so far in the NBL Canada.
Picture: PBA Media Bureau
