BATON ROUGE – Former LSU Basketball forward, Johnny O’Bryant III, returned to LSU and on Friday received his degree from the University in Sports Administration during school commencement exercises at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.

O’Bryant III, from Cleveland, Mississippi, finished his degree fully online as part of LSU’s Project Graduation program.

The mission of Project Graduation is to assist former student-athletes with completing graduation requirements and obtaining their degrees so that they can move forward in their career and individual life pursuits. This is achieved by being proactive in reaching out to former student-athletes and by providing information and assistance to those who reach out to the Cox Communications Academic Center for Student-Athletes.

Project Graduation collaborates with individual university departments, provides accurate and easy to decipher information (steps to re-apply, degree audits, health center requirements, financial aid assistance applications, and career counseling), and fosters a positive environment consisting of academic advisement, tutorial assistance, and total person support services. The initial commitment was made to assist these former student-athletes in obtaining a degree and that commitment is still honored and promoted even as they return as a student no matter the length of time since they last attended LSU.

O’Bryant III played for both LSU head coaches Trent Johnson and Johnny Jones in his three years at LSU, earning first-team All-SEC honors in both 2013 and 2014.

In his three years, the Tigers won 57 games and played in the NIT in both 2012 and 2014.

O’Bryant III is one of 44 players to score more than 1,000 points, posting 1,157 points and a 12.7 points per game average in 91 career games. He averaged 7.2 rebounds a game in his career.

O’Bryant III played four seasons in the NBA after being drafted in the second round in the 2014 NBA Draft by the Milwaukee Bucks. He played for Milwaukee, Denver and Charlotte in his career. In 147 games, he averaged 3.5 points and 2.4 rebounds.

He played internationally including for Maccabi Tel Aviv of the Euro League as the team won the 2019 Israeli League Championship. He also played in the top tier Russian basketball league in 2020, the Adriatic League and in Turkey in 2021 before signing with a team in the Korean Basketball League in 2022.

He most recently has played in the Chinese Basketball Association and in Japan.