BIO: Owen Odigie was born in Melbourne (VIC) and began playing basketball as a junior with the Dandenong basketball program. Odigie received a scholarship to attend the Australian Institute of Sport (Canberra) in 2010. He spent one year there and played for the program’s state league team.

NBL EXPERIENCE

Owen Odigie made his NBL debut with the Melbourne Tigers at 18 years of age. He went scoreless in his first NBL game.

With the NBA going through a lock-out season during the 2011/12 NBL season, the Melbourne Tigers signed NBA free agent and Australian Boomers player Patrick Mills who became the first ‘active’ NBA player to compete in the NBL.

Mills was a late signing for the club who had already filled their roster, which included signing Ayinde Ubaka, Ron Dorsey and Daniel Dillon from Cairns and gutting the Taipans Roster. In order to make room for Mills, the team was forced to release long-time guard Daryl Corletto, who later signed with New Zealand. Mills then played the first nine games of the season (averaging 19 points and 5 assists) before leaving to play in China.

This season also saw Tommy Greer named team captain, and Cam Tragardh (16.3 points) win the club’s MVP award after leading the team in scoring.

After Mills’ exit, they would replace him with Myron Allen and go on to finish sixth place during the regular season with a 11-17 record. Odigie would play in two games this season as a development player as the Tigers failed to make the playoffs for the third year in a row.

2012/13
In 2012/13 Odigie averaged 1.3 points, 0.5 rebounds, and 0.3 assists across fourt games, helping the Tigers finished with a 12-16 record in the regular season where they tied with the Sydney Kings in fourth place. With the NBL tie-breaker system based on the results of the games played between the team’s during the season to determine the order of seeding. The two team’s had won two games a piece from their four games against each other but Sydney earned the finals spot but having a points percentage of +2 over the Tigers. This saw Melbourne drop to fifth place and fail to reach the playoffs for the fourth year in a row.

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2013/14
During the 2013/14 season, Odigie averaged 1.6 points, 1.1 rebounds, and 0.2 assists and was a part of the Tigers squad which finished in third place with a record of 15-13. They would go on to lose to Adelaide in the semifinals (1–2)

2014/15 – TIGERS BECOME UNITED
On 20 May 2014, the franchise was re-branded as Melbourne United. The change was a attempt to move away from the Melbourne Tigers junior program which was a team synonymous with ‘poaching’ young talent from other junior programs in Victoria and had negative connotations with much of Victoria’s basketball community. The name, attempting to symbolise a connection to all of Victorian basketball was a decision made by owner Larry Kestelman.

The team retained head coach Chris Anstey and added Tigers legend Daryl Corletto who had spent three years with the New Zealand Breakers. Australian Boomers players David Barlow, who had spent the past five years in Europe and Daniel Kickert signed on with the club as long time captain of the club Tommy Greer retired.

The team retained their Tigers core of Mark Worthington, Lucas Walker and Nate Tomlinson who were all chosen to share the captaincy this season and their last move was to complement the squad by signing their import talent, adding Jordan McRae and Stephen Dennis.

Adam Ballinger, who had signed a two-year deal the previous season, was a part of the team up until the week before the season when United chose to release him. a unfavorable situation for Ballinger as every other NBL team had completed their rosters, leaving Ballinger nowhere to negotiate. He was eventually signed by Illawarra and played the remainder of the season with the Hawks.

United’s inaugural season began with a loss to Cairns (89–61) which saw coach Chris Anstey resign and replaced by his assistant Darryl McDonald.

Odigie would get his first chance to play as a regular rotation player in the NBL, appearing in 26 games and averaging 1.9 points, 1.4 rebounds, and 0.6 assists as United went on to finish the season in fifth place (13–15), missing out on the playoffs.

2015/16
Odigie helped Melbourne finished on top of the ladder in 2015/16 with a league-best 18–10 record 2.4 points, 1.3 rebounds, and 0.3 assists. Despite the strong finish under new coach Dean Demopoulos, the team lost to New Zealand in the semifinals, losing to the Breakers in two straight games.

2016/17
With the league allowing three import players per team this season, Melbourne replaced import duo Stephen Holt and Hakim Warrick with Cedric Jackson, Ramone Moore and Williams. They essentially signed a fourth import by then adding Tai Wesley (via New Zealand) who was allowed to sign as a local under the asian player rule and swapped one Boomers big man for another with David Anderson (via Europe) replacing Daniel Kickert (to Sydney).

In coach Dean Demopoulos second season, United started poorly (3-7) and Jackson (10.0 points, 4.9 rebounds, 5.6 assists, and 1.4 steals) quickly being shown the door due to a poor attitude and failing to buy into the team’s defensive principals.

Casper Ware arrived as his replacement shortly after, immediately changing the squad’s direction.

Around this time, Chris Goulding (17.0 points, 2.3 rebounds, 2.5 assists, and 1.0 steals), who missed six games with ankle issues, began to find his form, and David Barlow (5.1 points, 2.7 rebounds, and 1.3 assists), returned from a calf injury that had seen him unable to take the court at all for the past two years.

Behind Ware (22.1 points, 4.5 assists, and 1.3 steals) and a healthy roster, United turned things around, winning 10 of their last 18 games.

With the team still capable of reaching the playoffs, Devin Williams (3.2 points and 4.0 rebounds), who surprisingly lasted 16 games before being cut after media and fans pointed out his lack of production and called for an import change for most of the season. With a third of the season remaining, Josh Boone (10.1 points, 9.3 rebounds, and 1.1 blocks) arrived and quickly went to work cleaning up Ware and Goulding’s missed shots and finished as the league’s best rebounder.

In Demopoulos’ second year as head coach, he would struggle managing player relationships, and by the end of the season, it was public knowledge his relationship with certain players wasn’t ‘civil’. A divide between the veterans of the team and the ever-competitive Demopoulos would result in seeing United unable to replicate the success from the previous season, finishing in sixth-place finish (13-15) and both parties moving on at the end of the season.

In what would be Odigie’s last NBL season, he appeared in 20 games and averaged 2.1 points, 1.9 rebounds, and 0.7 steals.

Owen Odigie played six seasons the Melbourne Tigers. This included the Melbourne Tigers. He averaged 1.8 points, 1.3 rebounds, and 0.3 assists in 80 NBL games.

Dan Boyce (833 Posts)

Dan Boyce is a die-hard Sydney Kings fan who grew up in Melbourne during the roaring 90's of Australian Basketball and spent far too much time collecting Futera NBL Basketball cards.