Owen Moriarty Waited His Turn and It's Paying Off by Joe Githens

Many kids don’t want to wait their turn and end up making excuses to quit if they’re not playing. Senior Guard Owen Moriarty is the opposite. Moriarty has grown into the leader on the basketball team, both as a mentor to the underclassman and leading the team in scoring. He plans to lead O’Dea to another state championship run.

Moriarty was mentored by two O'Dea greats, 2021 guard, John Christofilis (Creighton) and 2021 5 star, Paolo Banchero (Duke).

“To be able to play on the same team as John and Paolo taught me so much about the game and has really helped me become the player I am today.”

As a sophomore, Moriarty sat behind Christofilis and other senior guards on the team. During this time, he was continuing to learn the game and how he was going to play a bigger role in the future.

He went from averaging under 1 point per game to over 10 points per game in the span of a year, demonstrating how much he learned in his sophomore year just observing the upperclassman play. Moriarty ended his junior season as the second leading scorer and was turning out to be one of the biggest leaders on the team.

With a second-place finish in Metro last year and a majority of the starters graduating, Moriarty knew his role was going to be much bigger his senior year.

“This season could be considered a better year than last year because of the state tournament and getting 10-15 more games than last year. There’s no guarantee on going to state and as a team, we need to stay focused of what’s ahead of us and take care of business to get there."

Although 3A basketball is loaded with talented teams this year, O’Dea has earned the reputation of always having a chance to make a deep run in the tournament.

Through the first half of the year, Moriarty has proven to be one of the top players in the state and is leading the O’Dea Fighting Irish to a 9-2 start while averaging over 15 points per game. This year’s team has a lot of younger players with less experience. This has made Moriarty’s role as a leader that much more important.

“We have a lot of confidence right now even being as young as we are. We still have half our season until the Metro tournament so there’s still a lot of work to be done. We try our best to trust each other on the court and trust that the coaches’ game plan will set us up for success.”

Moriarty will continue his leadership with a very talented and young O’Dea team and hopes to lead them to another State Championship.