HOUSTON (NCAA Final Four) - The 2016 NCAA Final Four will tip-off this Saturday in the NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas with 76,300 basketball fans in attendance. The event is the biggest platform there is for up and coming players and none is a bigger star at the moment than Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield.

Hield has had a spectacular senior year, averaging 25.4 points per game along with 5.7 rebounds for an Oklahoma team that was awarded a number 2 seed in the NCAA tournament and has been dominant in their games leading up to the Final Four winning their four games by an average 11 points per game. They will now face Villanova on Saturday hoping to move on to the National Championship game.

“We didn’t even have a real basketball court in the neighborhood until I was 12. So when I was around 11, I decided to build my own hoop. Let me just tell you, I wasn’t meant to be a carpenter. I was determined, though. I would explore abandoned houses for materials. I’d break off pieces of plywood from houses, but they were never the right size or shape. So I’d get a saw and try to cut it, but I was too small to hold it steady. My first few backboards were crazy looking. All sorts of bizarre shapes. Looking back, they were kind of artistic and cool. But kids would complain. Hey, Buddy, how we supposed to shoot on this upside-down triangle, man? Dude, Buddy, the backboard is rotting. My friends would give me a hard time for it. But secretly, I think they appreciated it. Because we had our own court.”

Hield eventually used milk crates to create basketball hoops.

Buddy (No. 4, third player from the right) and the Bahamas U15 National Team pose with their country's flag. (Credit: soonersports.com)

Hield was the leading scorer of the 2014 Centrobasket Championship with 19.8 points per game and had a fantastic performance against Caribbean powerhouse Puerto Rico in which he scored 30 points, including 6 three-pointers. The team ended in seventh place with a 1-3 record.

“There’s no one on the street. Everyone is locked in and loaded and watching his games (on TV). If you find people on the streets that’s because they’re on their way to work.”

And Hield is using this attention to empower the future of Bahamas basketball.

"There's always young talent coming up," Hield said in the Oklahoma locker room at NRG Stadium in advance of Saturday's Final Four games to Adam Zagoria of SNY.tv. "You see DeAndre Ayton, he's a blessing. So just having guys like him. There's a lot of guys down there who nobody's seen and they just need somebody to come look at them. I hope kids get to use my story as an advantage and show that no matter where you come from you can always make it."

The Bahamas national team will be back in the Centrobasket stage for its 2016 edition on June 20-26 in Panama City. Even if Hield is not with the team, he will most likely be taking the first step in his NBA career (Draft is on June 23rd), Bahamas will surely be inspired by his success story.

As national federation president Charles Robbins put it in the USA Today story, “We don’t have to use Michael Jordan anymore. We don’t have to ‘Be Like Mike.’ We can ‘Be Like Buddy.’ ’’
 

FIBA