As much as I like Sterling Taplin he just wasn’t the player he should have been this past season. I think it had a lot to do with his ankle injury against Nevada. He really didn’t take the time to properly let that injury heal and I think it affected his play the rest of the season. Jeffries is a fantastic all around player, the best we’ve had in awhile, but as others have mentioned he sometimes disappeared for long stretches. Curran Scott was a very good clutch shooter and won several games for us but his ball handling put us in a hole several times. The rest of the players that moved on played few minutes and in some cases way more than they should have.
All of the new players are still question marks at this point but looking at their track records so far it’s very promising. We’re all hoping Hill will be the shooter we’ve been trying to get for a long time. Is he? I don’t know but he has put up big numbers in high school and in some cases going directly against high level competition.
Rachal appears to be in the same athletic mode as Jeffries although without the outside shooting Jeffries displayed. He put up good numbers at LSU as a freshman and at Pearl River he averaged 15 points and almost 9 rebounds per game as a wing. Even though his outside shooting wasn’t great he still shot almost 30% from deep and he had a positive assist to turnover ratio which, I hope, indicates he’s a decent ball handler.
Ugboh appears to be a piece we’ve really been missing for years. He’s big at 6’11” and 250 lbs and averaged 12 points and almost 10 rebounds per game last year. He also made 45 blocks while averaging just over 2 fouls per game. Now his game does have some downsides as he does turn it over around twice per game and he shoots less than 60% from the line but he had some big time offers including Arizona and UCONN. With Ugboh, Falokun (who looked like a real help until he was injured), Igbanu, Horne, and Earley it looks like we’ll have a chance to be very good inside, especially rebounding, and the coach will have lots of options when it comes to creating mismatches.
Finally while some will see Taplin and Scott leaving as a big negative I like to look at it as a chance for Joiner and Jackson to shine. They are both better ball handlers than Scott was and I think Joiner is at least as good a clutch shooter as Scott and probably better overall as well as being a very good rebounder for a guard. Jackson still needs to develop an outside shot but he is a lock down defender that you can put on the opponents best guard and he can be deadly on the drive.
Looking at the upcoming roster, both new players and returnees, I see improvement in multiple areas where we had issues last year including rebounding, interior defense and ball handling. If Hill’s shooting and playmaking can transition to D-1 competition then we could even be a better shooting team next year. There are lots of unknowns at this time but I think I have good reason to feel we’ll not only be better next year but if all the moving parts can mesh we could be significantly better.
