OJ Mayo Bio
OJ Mayo was born to mother Alisha Mayo when she was 16 years old. OJ Mayo's father, Kenny Ziegler, played basketball for the Huntington High School as well, winning a state title. Until he was age 10, OJ Mayo enjoyed playing football and baseball as well; as a youngster he looked up to Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.
The first public mention of Mayo occurred in the Ashland (KY) Daily Independent in an article called 'Phenom' in the paper's January 21, 2001 edition, when OJ Mayo was just a sixth grader. In that article he was listed as being a "6-foot-1½ point guard with size 14 shoe". The article also mentioned that he had repeated a grade and therefore was ineligible to play varsity high school basketball as of yet.
OJ Mayo committed from Huntington to Rose Hill Christian, a private school in Ashland, Ky,since student athletes can play high school varsity sports as seventh-graders in Kentucky. In the seventh grade, OJ Mayo statistics often dwarfed the production of players five years his senior. In his first game for OJ Mayo varsity team he scored 27 points, had seven rebounds and made three steals. OJ Mayo was a seventh grader playing against juniors and seniors in high school.
During OJ Mayo seventh grade year in January 2002, OJ Mayo was mentioned in Sports Illustrated and on CBS Sportsline.com. There were also full articles in The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky), the Huntington, West Virginia Herald-Dispatch and USA Today.
After the completion of the basketball season during his eighth grade year, OJ Mayo moved to Cincinnati with Dwaine Barnes, a longtime family friend whom OJ Mayo has often called his grandfather, in order to attend North College Hill High School near Cincinnati.
OJ Mayo Bio In High School
In 2006, the 6-foot-5, 210-pound, 18-year-old junior point guard was selected as Mr. Basketball of Ohio for the second consecutive season, in addition to being named Associated Press Division III Player of the Year for the second consecutive season. OJ Mayo averaged nearly 38 points, eight rebounds, and eight assists per game. OJ Mayo also led his team to consecutive AP poll titles and garnered much attention from the media, appearing in the pages of Sports Illustrated among other publications. Much like another Ohio high school star, LeBron James, OJ Mayo has drawn large enough crowds to force his team into seeking larger venues to support the growing crowds, and often attracts National Basketball Association stars such as Lebron James and Carmelo Anthony to watch his games playing for the D-1 Greyhounds.
In February, OJ Mayo attracted the largest crowd to ever see a high school game in Cincinnati, more than 16,000, watched North College Hill fall to the nation's number one rated team, Oak Hill Academy. OJ Mayo had been considered a lock to make the leap straight from high school to the NBA, but the recent Collective Bargaining Agreement between the NBA and its players has instituted a rule that a player must be at least a year out of high school before he can enter the NBA, effectively curtailing those plans. On July 5, 2006, it was reported by ESPN that he will attend USC. On July 8, however, WSAZ-TV reported that USC was only one of three colleges that Mayo was considering: the other two being Kansas State University and the University of Florida.
On August 27, 2006, WSAZ-TV reported that OJ Mayo enrolled at Huntington High School in Huntington, West Virginia for the 2006-07 school year. OJ Mayo formally committed to USC in November 2006.
OJ Mayo was selected by the West Virginia Sports Writers Association as the 2007 recipient of Bill Evans Award for the state's boys basketball player of the year. OJ Mayo led the state in scoring for the 2006-2007 season at 28.4 points per game. Runner-up in the voting was teammate Patrick Patterson.
On March 17, 2007, OJ Mayo led Huntington High School to its third consecutive Class AAA basketball championship in the state of West Virginia with 103-61 rout of South Charleston. OJ Mayo finished with a triple-double: 41 points, 10 rebounds, and 11 assists. In his final moments with a minute left in the game, OJ Mayo threw the ball off the backboard from the free-throw line, caught it in midair, and dunked. He then threw the ball deep into the stands and held up three fingers, a reference to Huntington High's three straight basketball state championships.
OJ Mayo graduated in June 2007 and has signed a letter of intent to enroll at USC.
OJ Mayo Bio in College
OJ Mayo enrolled at USC in Summer 2007, taking two classes. While waiting for the season to begin, OJ Mayo began playing pickup basketball against current NBA players Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Jason Kidd, Mike Dunleavy Jr., Sam Cassell and J.J. Redick. OJ Mayo's first game with the Trojans will be a series of exhibition games over Labor Day weekend in Mazatlán, Mexico.
