I’m sitting at St Monica’s High gym in Santa Monica this past summer, waiting for Belmar, New Jersey’s Marina Mabrey and her best friend and Notre Dame teammate Arike Ogunbowale to come workout with renowned trainer Olin Simplis.
My NJ buddies say the Garden State “rolls hard” so I imagined Marina in my head driving with Arike on the 405 freeway pulling what she and her teammates did to all of college basketball in 2018: The Jersey Swerve.
It's the act of traveling quickly from the left lane all the way to the exit ramp in one fell swoop. Snap!
When the girls show up, we meet and I congratulate them both on being champs and we make some small talk. I tell Arike I appreciate that her parents are educators, because I’m a teacher besides being a sports writer.
Both girls have swag but come off as sweet, unpretentious and engaging. You could chop it up with them for hours without getting bored. They have chemistry together, especially when giggling at something funny together on their phone.
You could say they’re adorable and intense all at once. Marina says she appreciates that Arike is her support system, how dope is that, to win a national championship with your
“bestie”?
It got me tired, just watching Olin Simplis run these two athletes to their envelope: fire-intense drills, challenging them to master ball handling and press breaking. These same sets have landed Olin’s previous college clients like Spencer Dinwiddie to almost be the NBA’s most improved player recently.
The whole night I just sat back and watched these 2 girls fearlessly go straight at UCLA’s Kris Wilkes and WNBA’s Reshanda Grey in scrimmages.
Marina was looking sharp all summer long, training with Imani McGee, Monique Billings, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in training sessions.
What do all those talented cadre of athletes have in common?
All these O-Simplis trainees were projected to be a top 20 pro draft selection before working with Olin but all were selected top 10 after working intensely with him.
Something magical happened to me, E-Woods, as I watched the girls, I actually felt my heart skip a beat. That’s only happened to me 3 times watching hoops my whole life.
First, when I was in junior high in 1983 and Michael Jordan hit the game winning NCAA title shot for Carolina. Second, 30 years later when I was an AAU coach for a SLAM Mag team. I had a junior high kid named DeMar DeRozan taking off from the free throw line to dunk in 7th grade.
And third on this day in 2018, watching Marina and Arike do work caused me a defibrillation indeed.
I asked Marina if she had a good time in LA over the summer. She said, “People have been telling me I have the potential to be in the WNBA so the fun we had in LA was a by-product because me and Arike were there to work hard and improve ourselves.
“My big goal with Olin was to improve my handle, get down aspects of being a combo guard to help our Notre Dame team repeat as champions this year. My parents taught me to always have a plan, set yourself up for success.
“I need to embrace being a leader for our team again this year because the goal for the season is to win every game, I think long term. Under this blond hair is a girl who loved being a very good cross country runner in high school. Coach McGraw only demands we do what she already believes you can become.”
#HOF Coach advice
If you haven’t seen this 5-11 combo guard Marina play you’re missing out. She has ridiculous economy of movement, shooting skill, ultra quick release, unlimited range, physicality. I’ll save running down more attributes and just call her what she is: a stone cold killer on the court.
Proof? Look up her 17-18’ stats for how many steals she totaled, and you’ll see she had 187 steals in all. That spine chilling number is there staring back at you, reminding you that Marina is not just a sweetie off court but that hoop killer in game.
She didn’t just steal the ball 187 times last year; she snatched the hope of her opponents who thought they’d win that NCAA chip over her squad. That’s pretty dope.
What do you have to love about this girl?
Shes resilient and hopeful, I’ll let her explain, “Last year when we were beat by Louisville by 32 points, that was a low point for us. But we had to stay positive so we used our coaches’ belief in us last year to power us through all the injuries and came together.
“I took on the challenges of playing point, remembering I needed to stay sharp. My goal is to be that Diana Taurasi type of player I’m striving to become.”
I just read the ESPN and Sports Illustrated story on Marina and the Irish. They had good points like, “Notre Dame’s program is the only college team featuring 5 starters that are up for Naismith player of the year watch list.”
But those esteemed outlets missed the deeper story of how Marina has this fantastically accomplished family who are vibrant and successful people in life and in hoop. The Mabrey’s intensity and love for b-ball reminds one of the Plumlee brothers of Duke and NBA fame.
So I asked Marina what she thought of her 4 siblings. She told me, “I look up to my older sister Michaela who played at Notre Dame like me. She deserves so much credit for making me skilled and fierce. And my older brother Roy Jr. for creating my mindset. My younger brother Ryan, along with my younger sister Dara are upcoming ballers and making the family name so proud.
“Growing up, my dad was out of work for a while and we struggled financially, so we all learned that if we had each other then we had everything in life.”
How successful are the Mabreys?
Michaela is an assistant coach at LSU and just helped land a blue chip recruit. Roy Jr. was just named ASA Miami head coach and Dara just powered her NJ high Manasquan High team to a state chip and is now transitioning to be a college star at Virginia Tech. The youngest, Ryan is 15 and just killin it on the AAU circuit.
I read a story in which Dara recalled how competitive their family’s driveway hoop battles would get growing up, “If you lost you were going to hear about it the rest of the day. There were tears sometimes.
“I’d say to my mom, ‘Marina did this,’ or ‘Michaela fouled me, that basket shouldn’t count.’ And then when you check the ball up, you would throw it right in their stomach because that’s the level of competition we were playing at.”
What’s the secret sauce to forging champions? Dara just said it. That’s why I could write about the Mabrey fam all day long.
How much does Marina impress E-Woods, your humble writer/teacher? From all 600 stories I’ve written I can count on one hand the subjects I felt inspired to share as role models for my 5 year old age students.
I told my kids, “Marina Mabrey is that classy person, driven, yet visionary. I hope you all grow up to be like her, go out and win a national championship at whatever you attempt.”
I showed the kids a video on how well spoken yet bubbly Marina is. The kids said she is as pretty as Alicia Keys, yup M-Mabrey is that Girl on Fire.
I told the kids how Marina has dreams to be an actress and model, how she takes it serious in her acting classes on top of getting her skills up to play in the WNBA.
One boy said, “I’d give like $6,000 to see her movie.” I suggested to him to go see the matinee, you’ll save a couple bucks. Another girl said, “She’s so nice and pretty, I wish I had a big sister just like her.” Don’t we all.
I reminded the kids that Marina’s parents Patti and Roy taught their daughter Marina to follow her dreams, have a plan, work incredibly hard to be the best at whatever she attempts.
My kids were fascinated to hear that Marina wants to start a business of selling sweat proof eyelashes that you could glue on and wear in games. They loved that.
I have this theory that people are programmed by grade school to think that just because a male baller signs a $200 million dollar contract in the NBA, that must make them better, more skilled than a woman who only earns a 200 K contract in the WNBA.
How ridiculous is that?
I was curious as to what my kids thought of Marina’s game so I showed them the last 1:34 of Marina and Arike’s thrilling 3 pointers to win the NCAA title. Then I showed them MJ’s last 34 seconds of his college title chip and asked which did they think was more exciting?
What do you know? Notre Dame got 17 votes compared to 8 votes for Mr Jordan. The truth flows out of the mouths of babes. 100.
What makes Marina a baller for the ages? Her shot degree of difficulty in last year’s NCAA run was silly. Most shots you thought were just impossible to go in, but yet they did.
Women’s college basketball hasn’t seen that level of performance often in the NCAA playoffs. We bore witness to a woman averaging 15.8 points on 50.0 percent shooting, 19-of-38 (500) from three-point range, 5.2 assists per game.
Historical. It was the 5th most made 3’s of all time in March Madness. But to Marina that effort was necessary to help put a diamond and gold encrusted ring on the fingers of her teammates.
Mock draft website draftsite.com projects Marina will be the 19th WNBA pick in 2019.
Really? I run think-tank algorithms that go beyond the Kelsey Plum WNBA Draft Model. I listen to trusted college analysts like Kenny Plummer who projected Jordan Canada would be a top 5 lottery pick a full year ahead of others.
I just believe with my own eyes that Marina Mabrey is the truth. If you had seen how hard O-Simplis ran Marina her last summer you’d just shake your head in amazement,
Olin proudly says about M-Mabrey, “Marina’s work ethic is 2nd to none. If she’s not doing 2 or 3 a days, then she doesn’t feel she’s hardly working out at all. Her combo guard skills progressed so fast we put her under super stressful defensive break situations all summer. She gained poise and the ball handling skills to feel comfortable at the lead guard position at a very high level.”
Check out the video on the sessions for yourself.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bjf48UeA12C/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
E-Woods, why the title saying I wanna to be like Marina, more than MJ?
It’s no knock against the GOAT, he allowed me to have rare exclusive access to his Air Jordan Camp in Santa Barbara. I was proud to buy Jordan’s OG Chicago kicks in 84 but It’s time to wear new fresh gear from a player that has totally earned my respect, captured my imagination: M-Mabrey.
I have a tradition of having a custom jersey made of my fav college players, putting a nickname on the back like I did with Dennis Smith III a couple years ago like “Boosties” put on the back of his NC St uniform.
But my new fav jersey will feature an Irish #3 on the front. Others will invariably say, “Is that a LeBron throw-back Jersey from his St Vincents High days?”
I’ll tell them, “No, this is Notre Dame’s #3, Marina Mabrey. She’s the hotness in college basketball this year. On the back of the jersey it will say, “Jersey Swerve” to denote a cold piece of work for Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish.
It’ll be fresh to give MJ a break because when I see that famous Gatorade commercial and song nowadays, sing it with me, “Sometimes I see, that she is me”, I see Marina Mabrey acting in it, playing herself. 100.
