Bob Boldon has coached 32 different women over his six years at Ohio, and few, if any, have a higher basketball IQ than Dominique Doseck.
Doseck, a 5-foot-8 forward, is usually seen looking up to the player she’s guarding. However, despite being the shortest starter in Boldon’s lineup, she’s one of the Bobcat’s best offensive weapons. Often, fans see her make wide open 3-pointers and wonder to themselves, “how did she get so open?”
Or on defense, without being the fastest, she still finds ways to cause havoc for the Ohio’s opposition.
In her senior year, Doseck is averaging 12.7 points per game and is the Bobcats’ best shooter, shooting 47.5 percent from the floor and 45.5 percent from behind the arc, which is the best in the Mid-American Conference.
But what makes Doseck such a vital part to Ohio’s success isn’t what she does physically, it’s how she dissects the game mentally that keeps her a step ahead. Although Boldon is the man in charge, Doseck is the coach on the floor.
“Dominique is one of the smartest kids I’ve ever coached,” Boldon said after Doseck scored 17 points in Ohio’s win over UNC-Wilmington on Nov.11.
Doseck’s basketball mind is praised by her coach and also her teammates. When former Ohio guard Taylor Agler graduated last year, the Bobcats were left without their leader. Doseck was one of few players who stepped up into a leadership role, one that is mainly vocal, which gives the Bobcats a chance to learn from their smartest teammate.
“Dom definitely has the highest IQ of anyone on the team for sure,” sophomore Gabby Burris said.
But how did Doseck develop her elite understanding of the game? It’s simple, she grew up in it and around it.
Doseck — who originally is from Athens — has always had basketball in her life. Her father Dan coached the Alexander High school girls basketball team while baby Dom sat in her mom’s carrier. That wouldn’t last long though because according to Doseck she started playing “as soon as she could walk.”
“As soon as I could walk I started imitating the girls,” Doseck said. “Whether it’d be ball-handling on the side or I tried to chuck up a shot.”
Her imitating ended up paying dividends and soon she was playing on her own, with her father on the sidelines.
Even with her early start, Doseck still wasn’t the most gifted on the floor, so instead, she decided to be the smartest. From an early age, she was calling out her opponents plays before they had even started running them.
Doseck’s game has been honed through years of practice. However, that isn’t the reason why she’s so smart. As a kid, Doseck binged watch hours of basketball games with her dad, and she loved every minute of it.
“When I was a kid we would always just go and watch, we didn’t even care who was playing,” Doseck said. “I remember all-day tournaments at Logan where they’d start at 9 in the morning and end at 6 at night and then they’d go again the next day.”
That love for watching basketball soon turned into a passion for scouting opponents, and not long after attending tournaments with her dad as a fan, Doseck was back in the stands with her AAU coach talking out hypotheticals as a student of the sport.
“There’d be like five seconds left, team down one, and he’d ask me ‘what would you do?’”, Doseck said. “Because he knew that coaching was a goal of mine in the future.”
Doseck was born to coach. She comes from a coaching family and has an elite understanding of the game. She even coached a seventh-grade AAU basketball team two years ago.
It’s always been a dream of hers to manage her own team even though she doesn’t know what type of coach she would be. She’s not a screamer like legendary coach Bobby Knight yet, but she’s admitted to having a temper. Once, she got so mad at her players that she popped a blood vessel in her eye.
Learning how to control her anger is something she will grasp in the future. She plans to venture into coaching after she graduates.
But before then she must finish her senior season. The best year in Ohio history is attainable and a MAC championship is in reach.
She just has to be smart about it.
