Onuoha ready to start his OU journey
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It doesn't take long to recognize the potential.
After finishing his senior season with 87 tackles, six sacks, eight tackles for loss and 13 quarterback hurries there's even more cause to daydream about the future.
To be told those numbers were accomplished during his first full season at the varsity level while competing against others in the state's largest classification, one begins to realize why there's so much buzz surrounding Michael Onuoha.
"I knew if I worked hard either way I would be able to go somewhere and I just pushed it and just got all the words I could get from the coaches and fight through practices and work hard throughout the whole year," said the 6-foot-5, 235-pound Onuoha.
"I always thought basketball was my thing and after a while I started realizing that I'm heavy built and I can gain a lot of weight and start hanging with the big guys on the offensive side so I just chose football instead of basketball.
"This year was my first year practically to play football and I went all out and had a pretty good sack season going on and my tackles were really good. Overall I did great in my senior year, pretty much because my sophomore year I didn't play and my junior year we didn't have a good season and my freshmen year I didn't really play, either."
A change from a childhood dream on the hardwood to gridiron that paid dividends this past month when the Edmond Santa Fe prospect signed a letter of intent with head coach Bob Stoops and the Oklahoma Sooners.
"It was hectic I went through a lot of process before I made my decision. I took time and sat down and thought about it and talked to my parents and talked to my coaches - over and over to figure out how it's going to work when I get down there and after that I just made my decision," said Onuoha.
"I just got down to it and started thinking about family wise and things like that. I didn't really base it off of going down there and hanging out with them (other recruits). I based it off of family and my family is closer so I wanted to stay closer to my family and play football."
"I was pretty excited. It's in-state so everybody is going to know me and it was a pretty fun atmosphere. (Coach Bobby Jack Wright) kind of helped me out on the decision of going there and kind of making things easier of what to expect."
Quality help from the Sooners defensive end's coach that recruited the nationally ranked No. 34 weakside defensive end.
"He's a great guy. Straight forward and a strong spoken person and he'll shoot you straight about anything. He said once I get down there he would have me playing kind of like a little bit of R.J. Washington and Ronnell Lewis type rushing scheme."
For now the Sooner State's No. 3 ranked prospect will wait until his graduation in May before making it down to Norman in June for the start of summer workouts.
Spending most of that time this spring in a weight room while preparing for the infamous early morning summer workouts with Oklahoma's Director of Sports Enhancement Jerry Schmidt.
"We never lifted like this during basketball. We would usually just do a lot of running. Man there was so much running and it would be hard for me to gain weight and keep it," recalls Onuoha.
"My main thing is I'm just trying to gain a lot of weight and trying to get up to 260 (pounds) and that won't be very hard if I'm eating right and have the right eating habits and working out and carbs and things like that. When I get to OU I believe I'm going to get really big, really quick."
"I'm around 235-240 (right now) and I gain weight really fast. I gained weight during our season this year and I was weighing 215 coming into summer pride and practice and I got up to 235 and I'm still going up."
A task that shouldn't be too hard for someone with as much upside as Onuoha.