The University of Louisiana at Monroe honored three-time All-American point guard E.J. Ok after the women’s basketball game on Saturday. Ok’s jersey was retired and will soon be hung in the rafters next to men’s basketball great, Glynn Saulters.
Ok first attended the school — then called Northeast Louisiana University — in 1982 and led her team to three trips to the NCAA tournament, putting NLU’s basketball program on the map. In 1985, the 5-foot-6 guard, then known as Eun Jung Lee, took her team to the Final Four and ended the season ranked No. 2 in the Associated Press basketball poll.
Ok was named Southland Conference Player of the Year all four years she was at NLU and still holds many career records, including total assists and free throws made, local newspaper News-Starreported. She is second in in school history in career points with 2,208, behind Lisa Ingram’s 2,601. She was a Naismith Award finalist her senior season.
A Sports Illustrated article from 1985 says that she was known in women’s college basketball as the Korean Magic Johnson.
After two years of playing professionally in Italy and Sweden, the Korean native found herself back at Monroe for a coaching position on the women’s basketball team. Ok is currently the assistant head coach at ULM alongside head coach Mona Martin, and has worked at the university for 23 years.
On Saturday, Ok was joined on the court with her children, Martin, athletic director Brian Wicktrom and ULM president Dr. Nick Bruno, the News-Star reports.
During her speech she became teary as she thanked her coach Linda Harper who wanted to support Ok, but remained hospitalized due to serious kidney problems.
