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GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 27, ISSUE 3 72 "One of my coaches there really worked with me," Dominique Oden said. "I was really small, so I was always going to be a guard. But I didn't really want to be a point guard, and we had a point guard, so he said, 'Oh, you already have a pretty good shot for an 8-year- old, so you're going to be a 2 player.' Once I was a 2, I've always wanted to work and be good." And that meant getting in the gym. It hit a peak one summer in middle school when she worked out two hours a day, seven days a week for two straight sum- mer months. She was close to burning out by the end of the stretch, but had found something, too, that she loved to push herself to the limit. "A lot of my friends are like, 'You're so not social. All you do is stay in the gym,' " she said. "But that was it pretty much: Go to the gym, go back to my house, go to the gym, go back to my house. "… At one point, I was like, 'Man, I want to quit,' but I couldn't. The fact that I kept going showed me this was something that I like to do and I just needed to know my limit. It really showed me that I can do what I've been practicing." As did an AAU game a couple summers later. Play- ing for FBC Southeast Elite, her team trailed by 20 at halftime to a big-time opponent from Tennessee. But Oden erupted after the break, hitting three after three after three to spur a rally. Perhaps some stubbornness from the opponent helped — the Ten- nessee squad refused to come out of its zone — but Oden took advantage. She couldn't miss, ending an eye-opening 20 minutes of basketball with Southeast Elite coming back for a win. "She put the team on her back," said Miracle Gray, an AAU teammate and longtime friend who is also now a fellow freshman at Purdue. "I was right there with her. She scored like 30 points in the second half and I said, ''Nique is going to be amazing one day. Once she realizes (that), that's when it will be it for her.'" Oden was an impressive scorer at Marist, averaging 22 points as a senior and 23 as a junior, and totaling more than 2,000 points during her career. That's hard to accomplish without versatility. Oden's a solid shoot- er — she hit 33 percent of her three-pointers through mid-December at Purdue — but can get to the bas- ket and hit in mid-range as well. She has a feel for scoring, showing so early this season; in one of Pur- due's first games, she found a soft spot in the middle of the opponent's zone, receiving the ball in the lane and tossing up a short floater. That takes not only skill, but knowledge, as well, an understanding of how to beat a defense. Then, in her first three games as a permanent starter following the Boilermakers' 1-3 start, Oden totaled 46 points, including a ca- reer-high 23 on 7-of-9 shooting with four three-pointers, in a win over Wichita State. Purdue won eight of its next nine with Oden as a start- er, beginning with the win over the Shockers in the Cancun Challenge near Thanksgiving, a stretch that continued into late December. "I knew she could score," said Celebrates Student-Athletes Meet You At Arni's TM Jon McKeeman, Men's Basketball Graduate School (5), Health and Kinesiology McKeeman, a guard from Fort Wayne, is one of 54 Purdue student- athletes to be honored with the Big Ten Distinguished Scholar Award as announced this past summer. McKeeman, who has already earned his degree in movement and sports sciences and is currently enrolled in graduate school, is one of just 14 Boilermakers to have a 4.0 gpa. He joins Bree Horrocks and Hayden Hamby (women's basketball), Jimmy Herman (football), Matt McClintock and Sharise Lund (track), Kim Love (soccer), Mary Gooding (softball), Evan Barta, Alex Toetz, Madison Monteiro and Nika Petric (swimming), Gergely Madarasz (tennis) and Linnea Rohrson (volleyball). Similar to the Academic All-Big Ten honor, Distinguished Scholar Award recipients must be letterwinners in at least their second academic year at their institution. However, the Distinguished Scholar Award encompasses only students with a minimum GPA of 3.7 or higher for the previous academic year, excluding summer school.