re: DeShawn Thomas 6-9 JC Center commits to LSU Basketball

I agree. Always enjoy reading Scott’s insights.

Williams was all sec, playing against bigger guys. We’ll be fine. Emmit and Watford are 2 5 stars. We have talent.

Yeah Lester and thunderbird are presenting the worst case scenario as the absolute reality. We dont know what cooper and Thomas will give us but it is not unusual for juco’s from good teams to have low numbers because of rotating players. They are simply wildcards but you can’t say for sure they won’t be contributors. And it isn’t ideal to start a 6’8 and 6’6 at the 4 and 5 but there are successfull teams that do just about that every single year. Plus Williams has already proven he can match up with other teams bigs and even out play bigger players. He was not a liability last year. We have question marks but so do most teams, acting like ours are automatically death nails and all our wildcards will for sure flop is just chicken little behavior.

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it is not unusual for juco’s from good teams to have low numbers because of rotating players.

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People who only evaluate a player based on stats doesn't know how to evaluate the player by watching them play. And this fact you mentioned gets lost on those same people. After watching Thomas I think he will contribute right away and be a very good player. LSU has the foundation returning, they just need some good role players, and Thomas will be one.

The problem is people are on both extremes:

He's either awesome or horrible.

The truth, and likely Wade's expectation, is somewhere in the middle. He has been signed for depth and development.

They probably expect him to play 4-8 minutes a game and give some defense and rebounding.

If he gives more than that, and develops into a better a player, then that is just gravy.

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We dont know what cooper and Thomas will give us but it is not unusual for juco’s from good teams to have low numbers because of rotating players

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By almost all accounts of people watching Cooper practice here the last 1.5 years, he wont be much a factor. Certainly not a starter.

If Thomas was really good, say the KBW he's being compared to, he would have played way more minutes than he did. He didn't stand out much compared to the other bigs on his team, he was going to Winthrop before we swooped in last minute here. Keep in mind Charles Manning Jr. played PLENTY of minutes on that exact same Florida Southwestern State team and had good numbers. I'm not saying Thomas is a throw away player, but I don't think we should expect much more than maybe 10-15 minutes a game from him, not un-similar to what he did at at Fl SW ST.

I think it's way too optimistic to expect either Cooper or Thomas would be major contributors here, we have really good players, and some who aren't as good. Just the way it is and no problem in admitting that. Cooper and Thomas were last minute additions with very light offer sheets for a reason. If we had our way we probably would have had 3 or 4 other true bigs from JUCO before Thomas this year. It's just the position we got in after missing on some JUCO bigs then missing on Dante. Ultimately we still HAD to take someone and he was next guy up after we missed on Dante.

Eh you and Lester had said cooper doesn’t look good at practice. Many others have disagreed and said the exact opposite. And we weren’t the only SEC team to go after Cooper, Arkansas wanted him bad. And we might just have different definitions of major contributor. If they give us close to what Days and Williams gave us as freshman that would do it for me

I seem to remember a quote from Coach Wade in the last few weeks where he said Cooper will surprise a lot and has really improved sitting ou last year.

I’ll be surprised to see Thomas play more than the 4-8 minutes mentioned earlier.