Just my thoughts on some players upon watching/rewatching the game from last night.

Dent - This guy is probably the most important piece to our team this year being he is a very high level ball handler and we simply dont have that with anyone else on the team. He is obviously very talented, had 19 points, 10 assists and 0 turnovers last night....but he also played the most minutes of anyone and I think you see that as a trend this year. He is so important to making the offense work and you saw when he wasn't in there the offensive play did suffer a bit with Bashir/Ugochukwu and Clark kind of pulling some duty as ball handlers. Dent is not going to light up draft boards, but he is absolutely an elite level college basketball player and IMO the 1 guy we cant afford to lose this season. We were +43 when he was on the floor last night, the best of any player.

Niang - Talk about a pretty disappointing debut in the exhibition against FSU only to turn around one of the most dominant halfs I've seen from a college basketball player last night in 1st half. He had 14 points, 10 boards, 6 steals and 2 assists in 11 minutes in the 1st half, that's nuts. The dude is probably one of the best defenders in college I've ever seen. He is going to frustrate any player we put him on outside of maybe guarding the post on 7 footers probably. High high high level defensive player who just uses his athleticism to generate offense. You can see why he was draft a while back the potential there. He should not be playing college basketball right now.

Dessert - Another somewhat disappointing exhibition against FSU turned more impressive first real game with his 13 points, 7 boards in 18 minutes. On the downside the turnover spree continued with 4 and he fouled out in 18 minutes. Now the refs were absolutely whistle happy in this one which hurt Dessert for sure, but he needs to watch that this season still. He is WAY WAY bigger than I thought he would be here. I believe he is every bit of 260-270 right now at 7 feet. He was hyped up to be a nice athlete for his size but I wonder if the extra weight might be holding him back a bit now. Honestly I do expect more of him and he was the more hyped of the big men coming in between him and Ruzic.

Ruzic - I dont know if this guy will be coming off the bench much longer. Flat out in the exhibitions and this game he's been pretty consistently high level to elite. He just looks so comfortable out there and while he might be a downgrade defensively compared to Dessert he is a pretty big upgrade offensively right now IMO. He certainly isnt lacking much on defense either, the effort level is there.

Dioubate/Clark/Bashir/Ugochukwu - I think its getting more clear this group is your role players of the main rotation of 8 guys. Not to say any of them are average or bad, but they each bring a certain role to this team overall and is really what we need from them ultimately. These arent necessarily going to be your central "oh wow" players this season, although game ot game could have some good ones here and there. Would you believe Clark had 0 points in 30 minutes last night? Seems hard to believe, but it happened. He had 21 ripping 7 3's against FSU in the exhibition, I feel like he will be hot/cold like that throughout the season. Bashir clearly is in there to shoot 3s, handle the ball a little and not required much else. Ugochukwu is that guard "all arounder" type who isnt necessarily great at any 1 thing but can do it all for you at a decent enough level. Dioubate the same as a forward basically. nothing Dioubate does is necessairly pretty but "it all adds up" at the end of the game.

Levy - Obviously he finally got to play some last night and I stand by my we have 8 in the rotation with guys like him and Nunez if he ever gets healthy being those "emergency minute" guys when we have foul trouble or injuries to the above 8 guys. He is obviously a giant at 7'3, moves OK enough for a guy his size but would get run out the gym against a team that can run at all and is athletic. He could be fine for some short bursts but he was already looking slowed down a by playing less than 5 minutes at the end of the game last night. It's always fun to watch a dude his size drain a 3 though, and crazy this is where basketball is at these days where 2-3-4 decades a go, it was crazy to ever see 7+ footers take a 3. Also hilarious he doesnt even jump off the ground on his layups.