I was looking through the DMN’s archives to see the first time we ever mentioned Shaquille O’Neal. Shaq went to high school in San Antonio, after all, and we’ve historically paid a fair amount of attention to recruiting.
Turns out that our first reference was in an article from Sept. 30, 1988, at the start of his senior year:
Basketball recruiting experts are touting four Texas big men as among the best in the nation — San Antonio Cole’s 7-0 Shaquille O’Neal, 7-0 Matt Wenstrom of Katy Mayde Creek and Kingwood’s pair of 6-10 posts, Todd Schoettelkotte and Rodney Odom. Schoettelkotte, who signed early with Purdue, is the only one of the four who has committed to a college.
We all know Shaq turned out to be pretty good. How about the rest?
I know all about Matt Wenstrom because he played for North Carolina, my college team of choice. He was — and I say this respectfully — a nobody. A big body, but no skills; he scored a grand total of 194 points in four years, mostly riding the pine behind Eric Montross and the immortal Kevin Salvadori. Because of that big body, he actually had a cup of coffee in the NBA, adding all of 18 more points to his life total.
Rodney Odom went to UCLA, redshirted, transferred to UNC-Charlotte and had a nice college career there. He played for a while in Poland, and now you can hire him to come train your AAU team.
As for Todd Schoettelkotte, he apparently didn’t stick around long at Purdue, since it appears he finished his playing career back in Houston at Rice. Now, it seems he’s “a Director in the FTI Forensic and Litigation Consulting practice,” with “significant experience assisting companies with complex financial accounting and litigation issues in a variety of industries.”
I’d imagine that that being mentioned alongside Shaq was, in retrospect, the peak of each of their athletic careers.