Making an impact the DLO way

Almost four years ago, Great Britain native Dwayne Lautier-Ogunleye, nicknamed “DLO” in the basketball community, moved to the United States and joined Bradley hoping to make an impact.

“When I got here [at Bradley], I wanted to leave my imprint on the program and just be remembered,” Lautier-Ogunleye said. “I wanted to win a Missouri Valley [Conference] Championship, whether that be in the regular season or in the [MVC] tournament.”

At first, he didn’t see himself becoming a MVC champion or competing in March Madness, after joining a rebuilding Bradley basketball program.

Fast-forward to today, and the Braves completed the biggest comeback in MVC Championship history to win the title and received an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

The 6-foot-4 guard played an integral part in that historic turnaround, dropping 13 points – the second-most on his team – and going a flawless 8-for-8 from the free-throw line.

His hunger for basketball started when he was only a child in London. He credits his fascination with basketball to his mother, Catherine Lautier.

“My mom put me in [a camp] for a week, and every day during the week, we played a different sport,” Lautier-Ogunleye said. “I remember during one of those days was basketball. I actually enjoyed it, and they had a team that was out of the same facilities that practiced on weekends. My mom brought me on the weekends, and I kept going every weekend.”

From that point on, Lautier-Ogunleye stuck with basketball competitively and even had the opportunity to represent his country after playing for Great Britain’s U-18 and U-20 teams.

Then he was recruited by Bradley and made the transition to American basketball, following his participation in the 2015 U-20 European Championship in Italy.

Lautier-Ogunleye said that he fully embraced the new system and playing style.

“The past few years, [the program has] been really good,” Lautier-Ogunleye said. “At first, I didn’t really know what to expect, just because I’d been playing European basketball and coming here from England is a big difference. It’s a lot faster and a lot more physical over here.”

One of the biggest changes Lautier-Ogunleye noticed in the U.S., was the emphasis to detail – with how there were more assistant coaches for multiple situations and how college basketball is low-scoring and more defense-based.

It still took time for him to get used to it, especially with the uphill battle he and his fellow Braves had to face, being one of the youngest Division I teams in the nation at the time.

His first year at Bradley, the team went 5-27 overall, 3-15 in MVC play. They were also 1-12 on the road and eliminated in the first round of the MVC Tournament.

“When I got here, I was part of the first recruiting class,” Lautier-Ogunleye said. “I mean [the team] went through a tough time my freshman year; we won five games [out of 32]. It wasn’t fun. It was difficult, but it helped gain a lot of experience that we needed.”

Nevertheless, the team improved season after season to the point where Lautier-Ogunleye and his teammates finished out their junior and senior years with 20-win seasons. Bradley head coach Brian Wardle praised Lautier-Ogunleye for his competitive nature and ambition to improve as a player over the years.

“He’s a competitor,” Wardle said. “DLO is a guy you never had to motivate to get fired up, to get his juices going. He grew and got better and better. He wanted feedback. He seeked out constructive criticism.”

Lautier-Ogunleye noted that even his senior year was more of a challenge than he expected.

“This season, we went through a really tough time,” Lautier-Ogunleye said. “We started the conference going 0-5, but it was that resilience that we earned and gained those first couple of years that really served a purpose. We were able to flip it around and really get hot.”

He finished his collegiate career playing against the NCAA Tournament South Region’s No. 2 seed, Michigan State. The Braves ultimately fell to the Spartans, 76-65.

Though disappointed by being eliminated, he felt that he achieved all that he could ever dream of in a Bradley jersey.

“I always wanted to go to the NCAA Tournament,” Lautier-Ogunleye said. “I always wanted to go just to see what it feels like. Of course now, once getting there, you get a little selfish and you want to go further and play on, and I would have loved to. But I still managed to live a dream and managed to do something that not a lot of people get to do.”

At the end of the day, Lautier-Ogunleye is proud of his accomplishments but wants people to not only appreciate the recent successes, but also the hard work early on.

“I think I was able to make an impact, because that’s all I wanted to do,” Lautier-Ogunleye said. “Everyone wants to be remembered. But I think for the first couple of years, we had to do some stuff that we didn’t get credit for – just to lay the foundation. I take more pride in what I did in the first couple of years, just changing the whole outcome of the program.”

Although, Lautier-Ogunleye pursues a Bachelor of Science in marketing, he makes no plans on following that route after getting his degree and graduating. He’s interested in pursuing basketball professionally but wants to do what’s best for him and his family when the time comes to make a decision.

“I’ll be looking to play basketball professionally,” Lautier-Ogunleye said. “No idea exactly where yet. I think that will come further down the line. I’m pretty excited to see where it takes me and travel a bit more playing the sport that I love.”