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Publicity (March Madness 2021)


ORUTerry

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Love That Springman story!!....awesome how God brought him back from the depths  to find a spot at ORU....Coach was humbled and now he is doing what he loves at ORU....just a wonderful lesson in life....washing windows.....now coaching D-1 ball again....clearly Coach Springman is going to get really good offers....TheEagleman hopes he stays in Tulsa at ORU and gets a huge raise....God Bless you, Coach!   :tb-blue:

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57 minutes ago, Dr. Cornelius said:

 

WHAT A GREAT STORY!!!  If you haven't read it yet, take five minutes and do it. 

And what a fantastic support staff ORU/Paul Mills apparently has, between Springmann, Bozeman, Patterson, and Upshaw.

They sound like really awesome guys; so grateful this Sweet 16 run has afforded us all the opportunity to get to know them better.

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Major League Baseball-dot-freaking-com story on Paul Mills favorite team?

What’s next:  People magazine?  The National Inquirer?

Tiger Beat??

 

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Tulsa World: The story of ORU's Kevin Obanor is one of motivation and competitiveness

 Before Kevin Obanor blossomed into a 6-foot-8 menace who has propelled Oral Roberts to the Sweet Sixteen, he was a chubby kid cut from his eighth-grade basketball team.

“They had me be a water boy,” Obanor said. “I was out of shape and I was just chilling, watching TV (instead of playing sports).”

His story, somewhat similar to Michael Jordan’s, is one rooted in motivation and competitiveness, an underdog becoming an alpha and proving everyone wrong along the way.

“A lot of people were making fun of me for not making the team,” Obanor said. “There was a mental aspect that came with it. I just used that as fuel and it made me more competitive. It all paid off.”

A Houston native, Obanor had a huge growth spurt as a high school freshman and started focusing on basketball as a sophomore, playing competitively for the first time.

At Mount Zion Christian Academy, a military-style boarding school and NBA-player factory in North Carolina, Obanor developed into a Division I prospect. Among the schools that pursued him was Arkansas, which the Golden Eagles will play Saturday night. (FULL STORY)

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20 minutes ago, ORUalum said:

Sports Business Journal w/Mike Carter...

Awesome find!

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That is awesome - the Michigan girls all with the same answer to the history question "Who was Oral Roberts?"

Their response was understandably Big Ten-centric:  "THE TEAM THAT BEAT OHIO STATE - HA HA HA HA HA!"

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Christianity Today: ORU Basketball Fans Know to ‘Expect a Miracle’

The team behind this year’s most impressive March Madness upset carries on Oral Roberts’s legacy of embracing sports as Christian witness.

When Oral Roberts toppled Florida last Sunday, the charismatic Christian school entered rare company as the second 15-seed in the history of the men’s NCAA basketball tournament to make it to the Sweet Sixteen. Yet if there’s a miraculous element surrounding the small school from Tulsa, there’s also familiarity. There are five other Christian schools joining ORU in the Sweet Sixteen this year. What’s more, ORU has been here before—in fact, it’s gone even further.

While the school’s particular brand of Christianity might make it an oddity in major college sports, its involvement in basketball is part of a much longer story of Christian engagement with the game.

That story can be traced all the way back to 1891 when James Naismith invented the sport at a Christian college: the YMCA International Training School. Those origins, along with Naismith’s description of the task of a YMCA physical director—“to win men for the Master through the gym”—are often cited by Christian basketball fans as evidence of the evangelistic roots of the sport.

Naismith, though, aligned his life’s work less with saving souls and more with character formation. His basic goal was to “do good to men and serve God” and “leave the world a little better than I found it.” The sport quickly developed a life of its own, taking root in communities that crossed boundaries of race, region, religion, gender, and nationality.

Still, Christian affinities remained strong, particularly among Christian colleges. While football was the unquestioned king of college sports, the resources needed to thrive on the gridiron made it cost prohibitive for many smaller schools. By the 1940s and 1950s, urban Catholic colleges, Bible colleges, and Protestant schools embraced basketball, with Oral Roberts University joining the tradition as a new school in 1965. (FULL STORY)

 

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Expecting N.C.A.A. Miracles, the Oral Roberts Golden Eagles Make a Run

The team from Tulsa, Okla., plays Arkansas on Saturday, another chance to show they don’t belong in the men’s tournament.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/27/sports/ncaabasketball/oral-roberts-ncaa-basketball.html

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Tulsa World: Editorial: Hometown pride surrounds ORU with historic NCAA basketball Sweet Sixteen berth
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Evangelist Oral Roberts was fond of telling his flock to “Expect a miracle.” But, it helps to have the better team on the court, too.

That was what the players of Oral Roberts University men’s basketball team have brought to the NCAA championships so far. They have proudly showed themselves the better, more skilled team.

With ORU’s Sunday defeat of the University of Florida, Tulsa’s “other” hometown team became only the second 15th-seeded squad in NCAA Tournament history to make it to the Sweet Sixteen.

But the big game, the big shocker of the tournament so far, came two days before, when the Golden Eagles toppled No. 2 Ohio State in overtime 75-72.

Excuse us. The people in Columbus, prefer to be called The Ohio State University. As in: The overrated The Ohio State University lost.

It marked the first NCAA Tournament win for ORU since 1974, when it got to the Elite Eight.

Continuing that momentum, ORU took down seventh-seeded Florida 81-78. They will face No. 3 seed Arkansas with tip-off at 6:25 p.m. Saturday on TBS.

Forward Kevin Obanor and guard Max Abmas, the nation’s leading scorer, have become standouts on the Cinderella team. Credit goes to the perseverance of the players, Coach Paul Mills and his staff, who kept up a positive outlook and faith their hard work would pay off.

It’s an exciting and celebratory time. The team has brought national attention to its small, private, faith-based school and to Tulsa. (FULL STORY)

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March Madness: Oral Roberts spreads message via NCAA Tournament run (Daily Oklahoman)

Link: https://www.oklahoman.com/story/sports/2021/03/26/march-madness-oral-roberts-spreads-message-via-ncaa-tournament-basketball-run/7010093002/

Edited by Dr. Cornelius
added video interview
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