Excerpt from a Draft Express interview with DeJuan Blair:

Jonathan Givony: Not only were you the best offensive rebounder in college basketball this year, but according to an article I saw by Luke Winn, you were the best offensive rebounder in the last eight or nine years of college basketball. Can you take us through the nuances of what makes a great offensive rebounder from a technical standpoint?

DeJuan Blair: Like I tell everyone who asks me that, you’ve just got to go get the ball. You can’t just let the ball come to you, cause if you let the ball come to you, then it’s a chance that both of y’all can get it. If you outwork the next guy, and jump, and reach for the ball, it’s going to be an 80% chance that you can get the ball. If you go get the ball, I don’t know if you watched any of the games, I like to tap the ball to myself, or tap em off the glass, and get a lot of them. The big key of it is to go get it, don’t let it come to you. That’s what I do. I try to move everybody out of the way and go get it.

Jonathan Givony: As the shot is going up in the air, let’s say Levance Fields is shooting a three, are you looking at the trajectory of the ball, or trying to, kind of predict the angle it’s going to come off?

DeJuan Blair: Yeah yeah yeah. You gotta go take the angle. First of all your rebounding IQ has got to be pretty good just to go get the ball, you gotta go get it, and you gotta know where its going to come off at, and just go get it and chase it down. It takes a lot of hustle, its going to take a lot out of you, but at the end of the day that’s going to be big. That’s what I try to do, I try to have fun, try to go down there and just get it. Sometimes it bounces to me, sometimes it bounces away from me. Its fun, its fun rebounding.

Jonathan Givony: How do you feel about how your rebounding can translate to the NBA level, where everybody is bigger, they’re stronger, they’re longer, they’re quicker, they can jump higher, what are your thoughts on that?

DeJuan Blair: That’s just a bigger challenge you’ve got to step up to. There’s gonna be a lot of big people, a lot of big guys, so I’m just gonna try to keep doing what I was doing. Nobody is gonna stop me from getting the ball, and if they do. I’m going to try harder to go get it. So hopefully I can keep it up in the NBA.

Also Blair has lost 40 pounds in three weeks. He has a nutritionist and has made the weight room his new home. He went from 289 to 275 in three days. He seems like he’d be a good presence for the Bucks at ten.