Josh Oglesby has tweaked his basketball dream.

Instead of playing pro basketball for a living, he'd like to coach the game he loves at the highest level in college.

He's gotten off to an early start.

Oglesby, 23, is currently working as a volunteer assistant coach with the men's basketball program at Mount Mercy University and he's also running his own basketball camps at the college in northeast Cedar Rapids.

Oglesby starred at Cedar Rapids Washington, where he was the Class 4A Player of the Year in 2011, and he was a four-year letterman for the Iowa Hawkeyes, graduating in 2015 with 126 3-pointers to rank eighth in school history.

Oglesby, a 6-foot-5 shooting guard, scored 633 games during his UI career and averaged a modest five points per game. He enjoyed his four years with the Hawkeyes, even though he did not have as much individual success as he wanted.

"When I was in high school, I always wanted to play professional basketball," he said Wednesday. "But when I was in college, I realized that I wasn't good enough to be a professional athlete."

Oglesby looked into the possibility of playing pro ball overseas, but decided "It wasn't for me."

Oglesby staged some successful basketball camps last spring and summer and was looking for a regular home to hold his events. That led him to Mount Mercy University, where his father Ted Oglesby used to coach, and Mount Mercy athletic director Paul Gavin offered him a chance to serve as a volunteer assistant coach and hold his camps at the Hennessey Recreation Center on campus.

Oglesby's next round of camps at Mount Mercy will begin on Sunday, Jan. 17 and run for four consecutive Sundays. For more information on the camps, contact Oglesby at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Oglesby is helping with the junior varsity program at Mount Mercy and also attends as many practices as he can with head coach Aaron Jennings and the varsity. He'll start sitting on the bench for Mount Mercy varsity games after Jan. 1 and is looking to climb the coaching ranks as time goes by.

"That's my dream and my goal, to coach college basketball," he said. "That's what I want to do when I'm older.

"I love the game of basketball, I love being around it. It's what I want to do."

Oglesby got his degree in Recreation and Sports Management from Iowa, with an emphasis in coaching. He said he'll always be grateful for the four years he spent at Iowa and with the UI coaching staff.

"I'm obviously thrilled and always will be that I played basketball at Iowa and went to the University of Iowa," he remarked. "I met my best friends there, I had a great experience with basketball, school and just the whole university.

"Coach (Fran) McCaffery and his staff taught me a ton, how to be a basketball player and how to mature as a person and figure things out. I think he's a great coach and I think he's going to be at Iowa a long time."

Oglesby hit six 3-pointers and scored a career-high 24 points against Indiana, but he was mostly a role player for the Hawkeyes as a threat from 3-point range. "Obviously on the court I didn't have the best years I wanted to, but our team was successful and I was a part of that," he said.

Now he'd like to help other players pursue their own basketball dreams.